1. Gerhard "Gad" Beck was an Israeli-German educator, author, activist, resistance member, and survivor of the Holocaust.
11 Facts About Gad Beck
1. 2.
Gad Beck was born Gerhard Beck in Berlin, Germany, along with twin sister Margot, the son of Hedwig and Heinrich Beck.
3.
Gad Beck's father was born Jewish, and his German mother, originally a Protestant, had converted to Judaism.
4.
Gad Beck recalls in his autobiography borrowing a neighbor's Hitler Youth uniform and marching in 1942 into the pre-deportation camp where his lover, Manfred Lewin, had been arrested and detained.
5.
Gad Beck asked the commanding officer for the young man's release for use in a construction project, and it was granted.
6.
Gad Beck joined an underground effort to supply food and hiding places to Jews escaping to neutral Switzerland.
7.
Gad Beck was interrogated and interned in a Jewish transit camp in Berlin.
8.
Gad Beck returned to Berlin in 1979 where he was the director of the Jewish Adult Education Center in Berlin.
9.
In 2000, Gad Beck was featured, along with a few other gay Holocaust survivors, in the HBO documentary film Paragraph 175 in which he remembers his "great, great love" lost to the Nazis.
10.
Gad Beck passed away from kidney failure at age 88, survived by his partner Laufer.
11.
Gad Beck died on 24 June 2012, in a Berlin retirement home at the age of 88.