When You Come Back

Mason Corn, his accountant and friend, kept after him for years.

Finally, two weeks before Blum died, Corn got him to sit down. Blum could see the end coming. They agreed on what to do.

But Corn had to go away.

"He told me, 'Ok, when you come back I will do it,'" Corn said. "But by then, it was too late."

A fellow Holocaust survivor, Paul Skurka, was blunter. "He was a very smart man," he said, "but he died like an idiot."

With no will, the estate went to Staten Island's public administrator. Officials searched the world for a relative.

They found no one.