NATHAN B. BASKIND
Sometimes the dead reach out to us—through wind in the trees, the rustle of yellowed documents in forgotten files, or an unexpected email. In my case it was my great uncle Nathan Baskind, missing in action for nearly eighty years, who demanded to be found and brought home.
My new book project––Finding Lieutenant Baskind: A Jewish American Soldier, a Nazi Cemetery, and a Niece’s Quest for Justice 80 Years After D-Day––blends historical investigation and true-life mystery with a touch of memoir. It tells the extraordinary story of how one email transformed my life and led to what military historians now call one of the most remarkable recoveries in American wartime history.
In spring 2023, I received that email informing me that my uncle—1st Lt. Nathan B. Baskind, a Jewish American tank commander who stormed Utah Beach on D-Day—was buried under three stone crosses in Normandy’s German Military Cemetery. The unthinkable had happened: a Jewish soldier, descended from Eastern European immigrants and related to many Holocaust victims, had been discarded into a mass grave alongside fifty-two Nazi and Wehrmacht soldiers.
Determined to right this historic wrong, I partnered with Operation Benjamin, an organization committed to correcting the markers of Jews mistakenly buried under Christian crosses. I became the designated next of kin, and over the next year we worked together to unravel the mystery that military bureaucracy had deemed closed for decades. Using preserved dental records, newly accessed German war archives, and desperate letters from my great-grandfather to Army officials, we assembled a good sense of Nate’s final days.
What followed was a multinational effort involving delicate diplomatic negotiations with France and Germany, a December exhumation under brutal conditions, and forensic scientists from three countries identifying thousands of bone fragments. When the DNA results came back as a perfect match, even the experts were stunned.
On June 23, 2024—eighty years to the day since Nate’s death—I stood in Normandy’s American Cemetery as he was finally laid to rest under a Star of David, with full military honors and dignitaries from three nations in attendance. That same day, I affixed a bronze rosette to the Wall of the Missing—only the 27th in the cemetery’s history, and the first ever placed by a family member.
But Nate’s story doesn’t end there. In the French village where he was ambushed, a memorial plaque now honors his life. In New Castle, Pennsylvania, another tribute stands near his childhood home. Most poignantly, the German War Graves Commission transformed the very cemetery where he lay forgotten into a living memorial. Visitors can now hear Nate’s story through an exhibit and documentary that highlight his Jewish identity and honor his sacrifice.
This book is a deeply personal detective story, but it also speaks to larger themes: memory, justice, identity, and the sacred duty we owe the past. It contributes to the overlooked narrative of Jewish American soldiers in WWII and reflects our present-day longing for reconciliation and meaning.
“With bones, disinterment and DNA finally in the past, I have reflected on this unexpected and unbelievable mission to find Lt. Baskind. Here is what I hope my children have learned and what I will teach my students in the fall. We are at a moment where democracy cannot be taken for granted. We cannot assume antisemitism is no longer a threat and we cannot just sit by and hope everything will turn out okay. Uncle Nate fought for our freedoms, and his death reminds us that freedom is never free.
Burying the dead is among the most selfless of tasks because the dead can never thank you. It has been the honor of a lifetime.
In our fractured world today, the recovery of Uncle Nate, after 80 years in a German mass grave, represents a triumph of the goodwill of nations. All hope is not lost.”
