Gad Beck (photo from U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Last week we reported that Rudolf Brazda, the last remaining Holocaust survivor who was arrested for homosexuality, had died at 98.
Over the weekend, Alice Murray, director of the Dallas Holocaust Museum, sent a message that she got word of another gay survivor who is still alive. His name is Gad Beck, and he was profiled in the film Paragraph 175.
Beck was born in 1923 and worked for the underground during World War II.
Although Beck was half-Jewish, he managed to escape detention and deportation to a concentration camp. During the war, he used his non-Jewish gay connections to get food and supply hiding places to Jews escaping to neutral Switzerland. He was betrayed by a Jewish Gestapo spy and arrested in 1945. He was held in a Jewish transit camp in Berlin until the end of the war.
After the war, he helped Jewish survivors emigrate to Palestine. In 1947, he left Germany and moved to Palestine himself. He lived in Israel until 1979 when he moved back to Berlin, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The story of the treatment of gays during the Holocaust is told in an exhibit assembled by the USHMM and is on display at the Dallas Holocaust Museum, 211 N. Record St., through Sept. 5.
UPDATE: Steve Rothaus, a writer for the Miami Herald, interviewed Beck 10 years ago. He described their discussion as very moving. Here’s the link to the article.
“After the war, he helped Jewish survivors emigrate to Palestine.”
No he didn’t. He helped Jewish survivors IMMIGRATE to Palestine. One immigrates TO a a country. One emigrates FROM a country. The survivors would have EMIGRATED FROM Germany but IMMIGRATED TO Palestine.
Gad Beck was one of the gay heroes of the Nazi era, but he was never a pink triangle internee. As his published autobiography clearly states, he was a member of the Jewish underground who survived in Berlin until near the end of the war, when he was briefly interned in a transit camp because he was Jewish. The Nazis didn’t know he was homosexual, and he was not interned for that reason.
Rudolf Brazda was the last known survivor of the 5,000 to 15,000 pink triangle internees—men who were deported to the concentration camps specifically on charges of homosexuality. We should not confuse individuals whose homosexuality was unknown to the Nazis and who were interned for other reasons with those who were specifically targeted for persecution as homosexuals.
By the way, in addition to Gad Beck, I know of at least two other gay survivors who were interned as Jews. One of them, Jerry Rosenstein, has spoken publicly of his experience. Here’s a 1996 San Francisco Chronicle profile of Rosenstein: https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1996/03/30/MN11786.DTL.
Grammarian: Beck helped them emigrate because he was in Germany helping them leave. Jewish organizations in Palestine helped those arriving immigrate. The “from Germany” is understood in the sentence.