Richard Barancik, the last surviving member of the Allied unit known as the Monuments Men and Women, which during and after WWII preserved a vast amount of European artwork and cultural treasures that had been looted and hidden by Nazi Germany, died on July 14 in Chicago. He was 98.

The Monuments Men and Women were composed of about 350 people — among them museum directors, curators, scholars, historians and artists — whose missions included steering Allied bombers away from cultural targets in Europe, overseeing repairs when damages occurred, and tracking down millions of objects plundered by Nazis and returning them to their institutions and countries of origin.

He and others received the Congressional Gold Medal from U.S. House Speaker John Boehner on Oct. 22, 2015 in Washington for “heroic roles in the preservation, protection, restitution of monuments, works of art and artifacts of cultural importance.”