Gad Beck, left.
BERLIN – Gad Beck, an anti-Nazi Zionist resistance fighter and the
last known gay Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, died
on Sunday in Berlin. He passed away in a senior citizens’ home six
days before his 89th birthday, which would have been on June 30.
Beck was a pioneering gay activist and educator in
a severely anti-homosexual, repressive post-World War II German society. He was
famous for his witty, lively style of speaking.
On a German talk show, he said,
“The Americans in New York called me a great hero. I said no… I’m
really a little hero.”
Perhaps the single most important
experience that shaped his life was the wartime effort to rescue his boyfriend.
Beck donned a Hitler Youth uniform and entered a deportation center
to free his Jewish lover Manfred Lewin, who had declined to separate himself
from his family.
The Nazis would later deport the
entire Lewin family to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.
Damn. It sounds like homeboy lived. That kind of puts
whatever squabbles you may be going through today into perspective, doesn’t it?
Honor Mr. Beck today by reading the
rest of his heartbreaking, inspiring story, and then putting some positive
energy out into the world for his partner of 35 years, Julius Laufer.
Posted by Unicorn booty. Reposted at http://keystothecloset.blogspot.com,
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