Samantha Baskind will speak on:

“Finding Lieutenant Baskind.”

Growing up, Samantha Baskind's father would sometimes mention his "Uncle Nate," who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. He called Nate "a great Jewish American war hero," often just around Memorial Day. But the family knew nothing of his fate, other than that the US Army had declared him missing in action. That all changed last year, when a tip arrived in the inbox of Operation Benjamin, a nonprofit that tracks down gravesites of Jewish American servicemen who were mistakenly buried under crosses. There on a grave site for Nazi officers, was an unusual and Jewish-seeming name: Nathan Baskind. After a yearlong investigation and with the help of Samantha, Nathan's grand-niece, they arranged for a Jewish reburial in Normandy on June 23rd, the 80th anniversary of his death.

Samantha Baskind, Park Member, is a Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University and the author of six books, including “The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture.”