According to his account, his parents were killed in an auto accident when he was 3 or 4, and for the next 10 years he was raised in a German Lutheran orphanage. Then, he said, with $3.26 in his pocket, he fended for himself.

After completing high school he attended Marquette University in Milwaukee for two years, then enlisted in the Army in 1940 when he was 19 to avail himself of the proverbial “three hots and a cot” — a place to eat and sleep. After basic training, he was sent to Canada for instruction in explosives.

According to his account, he had a run-in with a senior officer there who extracted revenge by putting him on a plane to Britain without notice. By the time the authorities there realized he was not Canadian, and before the United States Army learned he was missing, he had parachuted into occupied France to apply his skills as a demolition expert and a speaker of German.

“If they catch you they’re going to kill you for being Jewish,” an officer warned him, Mr. Refkin recalled in an interview for the strategic services society this year.

“If they catch me for being a spy, is it going to be any easier?” he asked.

When the officer replied no, Mr. Refkin said, he delivered a typically practical response.

“One way or another,” he said, “I can’t let them catch me.”

He said he carried out three successful missions for the British. Once the United States entered the war he performed special assignments for the Americans, according to the society.

On one, he was ordered to retrieve a confidential file from what turned out to be a cabinet secured by a combination lock. When he could not open it, he came back with the entire cabinet — then was ordered to return it so the Germans wouldn’t discover that the secret file was missing.