DANVILLE – Two California men arrived in Danville just over a week ago. Each had his own story, his own mission.

But along their journey for answers, their stories came together with a goal – to recover a sword.

Abraham Raphael, a 38-year-old filmmaker, decided seven years ago that he wanted to give his father, David Towns Raphael, the gift of closure. Abraham's grandfather, Army Lt. David Towns, died in Germany shortly after the D-Day invasion. Abraham wanted to discover as much as he could about what happened.

"My father grew up without a father. I wanted to see if I could learn just what happened, how his father had died," Abraham Raphael said. "It took 10 years to figure out in which unit he had served because a fire had destroyed his service records."

Once the Army unit was known, Raphael began to track down members of the unit.

"I found out he was part of a combat engineering unit that landed at Utah Beach," Raphael said. "The men I talked with said they were immortalized in an embroidery of D-Day."

So began Raphael's documentary: "The Face on the Embroidery."

"I learned from interviews that just a few days after the landing, the unit approached a German gun nest, which was displaying a white flag," Raphael said. "The Germans asked for an officer to accept their surrender. When my grandfather raised his head, the white flag dropped and the gunner literally blew his face off, one guy told me."

An interview with one of the men from the unit brought Raphael to Danville in 2004. After he recorded Marvin Dossey's recollections, the veteran wanted to show him something. Dossey, who used to own North Gilbert Auto Supply & Tires, produced a sword he had taken from the ruins of a museum when his Army unit moved through Cologne.

"I think it was from a basement, as I recall," Dossey said of the sword. "I picked up a lot of things back then. We all did."

The 88-year-old Dossey – originally from Bismarck, now a Danville resident – said he has donated items to the Vermilion County War Museum in Danville and the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, as well as museums in Caen and Ste Mere Eglise, France, because of visits he made to those places.

The sight of the sword made an indelible impression on the young man and would eventually lead him back to Danville along with Jerry Feldman, also from West Lake Village, Calif.

Feldman, 70, an attorney and a businessman, had his own story. He's a Holocaust survivor.

More than 30 years before there was an Abraham Raphael, Sarah Rosenstock Feldman, then 26, saw her family and friends hauled off to concentration or work camps. In 1940, she fled Poland carrying her 6-month-old son, Jerry. Though she didn't share the information with her son, in 1972, Sarah completed American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates and Nazi Victims testimony forms stating that her father, Bernard Rosenstock, died at Auchwitz, and her brother, Israel Rosenstock, died at Kamionki, "burned alive in camp."

"My father was conscripted into the Polish military and sent to face the Germans. We never saw him again," Feldman said. "My mother escaped Poland and ran as deep as she could into Russia."

"I learned this much from others. My mother would never speak of it," Feldman added. "Five years later, we returned to Poland via Czechoslovakia. And while working in a displaced-persons camp, my mother met and married Nathan Grau, who was the only father I've known."

When deciding whether to emigrate to Israel or America, Nathan gave in to Sarah's wishes and they landed in Boston Harbor on Nov. 30, 1949, when Feldman was 8. He grew up in New York City.

His professional life has been full of successes. But over the years, Feldman has wanted to know more about the past, and he wanted to document the discovery process.

"Our whole family was destroyed. I have believed all my life that my mother didn't give up, didn't just lay down and die, that she lived to save me," Feldman said. "But now, I feel like it was a two-way street, because I was spared, because I lived, I saved her too."

That's when Feldman approached Raphael, who had produced a video for Feldman's company, CallSource.

Raphael agreed to the work with the caveat that Feldman help him acquire the sword he'd seen in 2004. The filmmaker's curiosity about the sword and the ability to do Internet research had led him to believe the sword came from the Museum of East Asian Art, founded by Adolf and Frieda Fischer in 1909. It was heavily damaged in one of the last air raids on Cologne of World War II. The Fischers' collection began with their own collected items. Then through the donations of some wealthy Jewish benefactors, the Fischers were able to make three additional trips to create a museum that could share the Asian culture with the people of Germany, according to Adele Schlombs, museum curator.

"I wanted to see the sword returned to the museum," Raphael said. "Hundreds of items had gone missing during the war. I thought this was a chance for a veteran to donate just one item back and maybe others would follow."

The memory of the sword left him wanting to do something he felt would be significant for his religion and culture – and perhaps even the beginning of a movement.

The two men, asking Dossey and his wife to give up the sword, stunned the Danville couple. They felt a bit possessive of it, plus the couple didn't know Feldman.

"I just told them no," Dossey said. "I wanted to keep it and didn't think I would change my mind."

The two men's stories pulled at the couple's emotions, but they were not prepared to just give it to anyone.

What was supposed to be a quick trip to a small Midwest town and an easy recovery of the sword suddenly hit a snag. They weren't sure what to do. But eventually they were put in touch with Harold "Sparky" Songer and the Vermilion County War Museum. Even with Songer's help, the Dosseys held firm.

The two men left Danville to catch a flight Thursday evening. They arrived in Indianapolis, turned in their rental car and were on their way to the terminal when Raphael's cell phone rang.

"We've reconsidered," said Edwina Dossey, Marvin's wife. "We want you to have the sword."

The men turned around, rented another car and headed back to Danville. When they arrived, they went to the Dosseys' home and retrieved the sword.

"I guess I just figured that anything in Germany was German," Dossey now admits. "When I found out the whole story, when I saw how meaningful returning the sword to the museum would be for them, I decided it probably meant more to the two of them than to anyone else in the world, all this time later. If it makes them happy, then I'm glad to give it to them."

Raphael said the whole experience was such a roller coaster of emotions, he was just glad to get off.

"The thing is that as we were driving to Indianapolis, we were disappointed not to have gotten the sword, but we were glad the delay allowed us to meet so many wonderful, friendly people, who tried very hard to help us and in the end, it happened," Raphael said.

The sword will remain at the war museum until the details of its return to Germany can be worked out. The German museum must still verify that the sword came from its collection.

Once all the arrangements are made, Feldman and Raphael plan to return and the war museum will host a reception to officially thank the Dosseys for their donation.

"I hope it's just the beginning," Feldman said. "There's a lot of stuff still out there. I hope what Marvin has done will inspire others to do the same."