NORMANDY — U.S. Army 1st Lieutenant Nathan Baskind was reburied with full military honors at the Normandy American Cemetery on June 23, 2024, 80 years to the day after he died from wounds sustained in the Battle of Cherbourg. His identification, confirmed through DNA analysis, ended a 79-year uncertainty about his fate.

Baskind came ashore on Utah Beach on D-Day with the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion. He was ambushed and shot before being taken prisoner by German forces and sent to a Luftwaffe field hospital, where he succumbed to his wounds on June 23, 1944. He was buried in a mass grave alongside 23 German soldiers. After World War II, that grave was relocated to the Marigny (Normandie) German War Graves Cemetery.

In 1957, the American Grave Registration Service attempted to identify Baskind’s remains but failed, despite recovering his unit patch, lieutenant’s bars, and dog tag. The Baskind family was never informed due to the lack of definitive identification. Decades later, a genealogist flagged the name “Nathan Baskind” in German military cemetery records as unusual, prompting the nonprofit Operation Benjamin to investigate.

Operation Benjamin, which works to correct headstones of Jewish American soldiers mistakenly marked with a cross, sought permission from the U.S., Germany, and France to exhume the remains. Brigadier General Secretary General Dirk Backen of the German War Graves Commission initially denied the request, citing the failed 1950s effort, but reconsidered after reviewing advances in DNA analysis and watching a video appeal from Baskind’s great-niece, Samantha Baskind. “Operation Benjamin presented a video from Professor Samantha Baskind, the grand-niece of Nathan B. Baskind, and she asked us for help. How can you say no to that?” Backen said.

A 17-person team spent three days in December hand-excavating the grave. Tiny bone samples were sent to the U.S. for analysis and matched with DNA from Baskind’s descendants. “We had these tiny samples of bone analyzed in the United States and we had prior to this gotten DNA samples from the remaining Baskind descendants, and we hit an absolutely spectacular match. We had Nathan Baskind,” said Shalom Lamm, co-founder and chief historian of Operation Benjamin.

“Nathan Baskind is a unique story, even for us,” Lamm said.

Samantha Baskind, an author and professor, described the family’s decades-long uncertainty as “a jagged scar that has run through our family.” She chose the casket and signed disposition documents. “When I first heard about Uncle Nate, I was floored. I didn’t actually even believe at the beginning that this was true when I first received an email from Shalom,” she said. “As Nate’s great-niece, I am so proud that we found him, that I could participate in finding him, and that I can carry his memory forward forever.”