Richard Baranczyk, the last surviving member of the Allied unit known as Men and Women, a memorial to preserve the vast amount of European artefacts and cultural treasures looted and hidden by Nazi Germany during and after World War II, died July 14 in Chicago. He is 98 years old.
His death at the hospital was confirmed by his daughter, Jill Barancik.
Mr. Barancik (pronounced ba-ron-sik) is one.
On the day of the ceremony, Mr. Barancic told The Los Angeles Times: “Americans cared about the cultural traditions of Europe. We did everything we could to protect what the Nazis had done. It was the best we could do.”
Army Private First Class, Shri. Barancic served in England and France — where he was not on the front lines, his daughter said — and enjoyed the parade, food and structure of military life until Germany surrendered. After being assigned to Salzburg, Austria, he volunteered for the Memorial Men, serving as a driver and guard for three months.
The memorials involved men and women about 350 people – among them museum directors, curators, scholars, historians and artists – driving Allied bombers away from cultural targets in Europe; Supervise repairs when damage occurs; and tracing and returning millions of items looted by the Nazis to institutions and countries.
Later an architect, Mr. Barancik became interested in art. He drew cartoons for his high school newspaper and found it exciting to see churches and other buildings in Europe. But as a man of monuments, he probably did not see many of the paintings, sculptures, and other artefacts he was guarding and transporting to an Allied collection center; They were in boxes.
“Somebody might have said, ‘There’s a Vermeer,’ and they knew the art was important or valuable,” said Robert Edsel, founder and president of the Memorial Men and Women Foundation, Mr. Barancik and 20 other survivors were adapted from his book “The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, and Breast Thieves, with 20 Thieves in Mind 90 ) into the 2014 film “The Monuments Men” directed by and starring George Clooney.
Mr. Edsel said in his two interviews that Mr. Barancic was wary, surprised to find interest in a man of short-lived monuments who, unlike his more experienced colleagues, lacked artistic specialization.
“He seemed more curious about me, being able to put what he had done into perspective, he didn’t know where he fit into the overall picture,” Mr. Edsel said by phone.
Ms. Barancik said he was “very embarrassed by the attention” he received for awarding his father the Congressional Gold Medal.
“He didn’t feel like a hero,” she said by phone. “He said, ‘I’m a kid, I was there for three months. It was wrong for me to get a loan’. But I told him, ‘You were a witness, you were representing people who are no longer with us.’
After the ceremony, Mr. To Barancic, Mr. Edsel recalled, “I have a very deep appreciation for what you and the foundation have done, and an honor beyond my ability to express.”
Richard Morton Baranczyk was born on October 19, 1924 in Chicago. His father, Henry, was a family physician and served as chief of staff at South Shore Hospital; His mother, Carrie (Grayvogue) Barancik, was a homemaker and played piano for ballet classes.
After he became a man of monuments, Mr. Barancik stayed in Europe to study architecture at the University of Cambridge in England and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. After returning to the United States, he entered the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and earned a master’s degree in architecture in the late 1940s.
In 1950 he opened the architectural firm Barancic, Conte & Associates with one of his design instructors at the University of Illinois. The company has designed private homes, office towers, suburban office complexes, bowling alleys, schools and luxury apartment buildings.
“I actually practice architecture seven days a week, all my waking hours,” he told The Chicago Tribune in 1986. “It’s an all-consuming profession.” He retired in 1993.
Along with his daughter Jill, Mr. Barancic is survived by two daughters, Kathy Graham and Ellie Barancic; two sons, Robert and Michael; four grandchildren; and three grandchildren. His marriage to Rema Stone ended in divorce, and his marriages to Claire Holland and Suzanne Hammerman ended in their deaths.
A benefit of the attention Mr. Barancic received as a memorials person was the correspondence he received.
“He was getting fan mail and an autograph request once a week,” Ms. Barancik said. “He was getting sensitive letters from people, a lot of them from school children, which kept the conversation going.”
