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. ...
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.
Speaking about his life as a gay Jew, Beck invoked a line frequently cited about homosexuality: "God doesn't punish for a life of love."
He was featured in the film The Life of Gad Beck and the documentary Paragraph 175. ...
Following his release, Beck joined Chug Chaluzi, an underground Zionist resistance youth group, and played a key role in securing the survival of Jews in Berlin. ...
Shortly before the end of the war in 1945, a Jewish spy working for the Gestapo betrayed Beck and some of his fellow resistance fighters. ...
Beck is survived by his partner of 35 years, Julius Laufer.
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http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=275187
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