Jewish-American GI found in mass grave with Nazis handed over to US
By MATTHEW M. BURKE
STARS AND STRIPES • May 28, 2024
Army 1st Lt. Nathan Baskind receives a final salute during a dignified recovery of remains ceremony at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center chapel in Germany on Tuesday, May 28, 2024. U.S. Army and German honor guard members paid their respects to Baskind, whose remains were recently recovered from a World War II mass grave in France and identified by a team of experts.
(Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes) LANDSTUHL, Germany — The remains of a Jewish-American soldier who died in 1944 and was buried with Nazis in a mass grave in occupied France were given to U.S. officials Tuesday during a transfer ceremony at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. The case of Army 1st Lt. Nathan Baskind, 28, marks only the second time that a group outside the Defense Department has identified a missing U.S. service member. The German War Grave Commission in 2023 partnered with two American organizations, the PFC Lawrence Gordon Foundation and Operation Benjamin, to disinter and identify Baskind’s remains, which had first been co-mingled in a mass grave in Cherbourg.
“I am profoundly thankful for the extraordinary lengths that all of those groups have gone to do the unbelievable,” Baskind’s great-niece, Samantha Baskind, said by phone Thursday. The burial “will be a beautiful day for my uncle.”
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https://www.stripes.com/history/2024-05-28/world-war-nazis-hitler-14004030.htmlSource - Stars and Stripes
