What the War Took

The answer begins in Poland.

Roman Blum was there when Nazi Germany invaded in 1939. He spent five years in concentration camps in Poland and Germany, until he was freed in 1945.

So many of his relatives died in the Holocaust that, decades later, the search for his heirs would keep coming up empty.

In 1949, he came to the United States and settled in Queens. He went into real estate. After the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge was built, he built and sold homes on Staten Island, hundreds of them. He also invested in stocks and in oil rigs in Alaska.

He married, but the marriage ended without children. His ex-wife died in 1992.

"He was very shy," a neighbor said. "We didn't know he was a millionaire."