A Jewish D-Day veteran was reburied on June 23 in Normandy — after 80 years in a Nazi mass grave — thanks to a mission by Operation Benjamin, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Steve Lamar, a Silver Spring resident and member of Woodside Synagogue Ahavas Torah.
Nathan Baskind, a first lieutenant in the Army, was shot behind enemy lines, died in a German prisoner-of-war camp and was buried alongside Nazis and German soldiers, where he was unidentified as a Jewish American for eight decades, according to a year-long investigation by Operation Benjamin. He was 28.
Operation Benjamin identifies Jewish American soldiers from World Wars I and II who were buried under crosses in American military cemeteries around the world and replaces those headstones with Stars of David.
Shalom Lamm, the co-founder and chief historian of Operation Benjamin, said he received an email in December 2022 from genealogist Eric Feinstein, who had browsed the Volksbund — German War Graves Commission — database and come across the name “Nathan Baskind.” Noting that “Nathan” was not a German name, Feinstein discovered that Baskind’s parents were Jewish, and he wrote to Lamm that this soldier’s history might be worth exploring.
It turned out that Baskind had been missing in action since June 1944.
Baskind’s great-niece, Samantha Baskind, was stunned when she received an email from Lamm on behalf of Operation Benjamin.
“[My] second [reaction] was shock that he was buried in the German military cemetery, which took my breath away, and then that he was in a mass grave with Nazis and German soldiers … but it never seemed possible that they would be able to get him out of there,” Baskind said. “He’s in the mass grave with dozens of other people in a cemetery that’s run by the Volksbund — the Germans — on French soil.”
Samantha Baskind, who teaches art history and the Holocaust, delved into her family’s history and learned details about Nathan Baskind’s life. Operation Benjamin’s next step was securing approval from a next-of-kin, Samantha Baskind, who said she wanted her great-uncle “out of there if possible.”
Operation Benjamin worked with the Volksbund to exhume Nathan Baskind’s skeletal remains from the mass grave in Marigny in December 2023. Together, they located a femur and humerus with an “extraordinarily high-level DNA match” to Nathan Baskind. Since they recovered only partial remains, Samantha Baskind honored him both at the mass grave and at his new resting place in Normandy.
On June 21, Operation Benjamin volunteers and others gathered at the Marigny German War Cemetery to honor Nathan Baskind before his reburial in Normandy.
German Brig. Gen. Dirk Backen, the head of the Volksbund, eulogized Nathan Baskind in his remarks: “You did not die in vain.”
Bethany Mandel, a Silver Spring resident and co-founder of Shield Communications who attended the ceremony, said the most powerful moment for her was hearing German officials’ speeches.
“It was just amazing to listen to someone with a German accent, representing Germany, eulogizing so poignantly a Jewish veteran from Pittsburgh,” Mandel said.
At the end of the ceremony, an official formed a circle around the mass grave, and participants sang a traditional Jewish song in their four languages: English, French, German and Hebrew.
“We stood in a circle in this German cemetery, memorializing these Jewish soldiers singing ‘Shalom Aleichem,’ — ‘peace in our time,’” Mandel said. “It was just one of those out-of-body moments where you’re like ‘anything in this world is possible if this is possible.’”
On June 23, about 100 people gathered in Normandy for Nathan Baskind’s reburial — with full military honors, including Americans, Israelis, Germans from the Volksbund, dignitaries, members of a French military memorial group and Normandy battlefield guides, who had served as translators and laborers during the exhumation.
“Everyone was intent on honoring him and there was not a dry eye,” Samantha Baskind said.
“It was a message that we were all standing together for the Jewish kid from Pittsburgh,” she added. “We came together despite our history and it’s, in the end, not just about one person. There’s a larger picture here; it’s the coming together of nations.”
At the cemetery, a Jewish soldier handed a folded American flag to Samantha Baskind, who said both were in tears.
Samantha Baskind said there were religious accommodations, such as a rabbi presiding instead of a military chaplain. The reburial ceremony marked the first time anyone had observed the Jewish tradition of “dust to dust” — shoveling dirt into the grave to honor the Jewish belief that people both start and end as dust — in Normandy.
“Operation Benjamin got permission so that we could do that for Nate,” Samantha Baskind said. “They afforded us the flexibility to have a military ceremony that was also fully Jewish.”
Lamar said he had visited the German cemetery in Marigny on June 21 and also in 2023.
“It just struck me how amazing it was,” Lamar said. “[Nathan Baskind’s] identified remains were only moved 50 kilometers from one cemetery to another cemetery, but the journey is far greater. It’s from a mass grave to a place of prominence and honor where he’s going to be recognized both as a U.S. soldier and as a Jewish American soldier, and he’s going to be visited by two million people a year.”
He said Operation Benjamin’s process is methodical and thorough to ensure that the details of soldiers’ stories are accurate. The organization has completed 26 headstone changes for Jewish American soldiers since its inception in 2016, according to Lamar. Of these missions, this is the first reburial.
“It’s just a miracle that this worked,” Lamm said of the 18-month-long mission to rebury Nathan Baskind.
Samantha Baskind said the reburial of her great-uncle was significant as it properly recognized him as a Jewish person: “In a sea of crosses, there’s now a Star of David.”
She added that providing a burial for someone is the ultimate mitzvah, or good deed, and, until recently, it was one that her great-uncle did not receive.
“Due to the extraordinary efforts of Operation Benjamin … they were able to work with different governments and many different parties to make this happen, to give closure to our family,” Samantha Baskind said.
