An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin

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Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1999 - Biography & Autobiography - 165 pages
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That a Jew living in Nazi Berlin survived the Holocaust at all is surprising. That he was a homosexual and a teenage leader in the resistance and yet survived is amazing. But that he endured the ongoing horror with an open heart, with love and without vitriol, and has written about it so beautifully is truly miraculous. This is Gad Beck's story.

 

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AN UNDERGROUND LIFE: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin

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Beck, director of Berlin's Jewish Adult Education Center, recalls his youth and his work in the anti-Nazi resistance under most unusual circumstances. Beck was half of a pair of twins (with his sister ... Read full review

Contents

Section 15
102
Section 16
107
Section 17
109
Section 18
115
Section 19
121
Section 20
139
Section 21
140
Section 22
146

Section 9
79
Section 10
87
Section 11
96
Section 12
97
Section 13
98
Section 14
100
Section 23
150
Section 24
156
Section 25
160
Section 26
164
Copyright

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Page 20 - Vivian and some neighbours came running, but by the time they got him to the hospital, he was dead.
Page 17 - Up to that time I had been one of the well-liked pupils. I was always in a good mood, lively and funny. Then all of a sudden strange things started happening. "Herr Teacher, can I sit somewhere else? Gerhard stinks like sweaty Jewish feet!
Page 157 - Do you want to come in and have a cup of coffee?
Page 92 - When I went over the side with my children and got in the boat there were no seamen in it. Then came a few men, but there were oars with no one to use them. The boat had been filled with passengers, and there was nothing else for me to do but to take an oar.
Page 18 - My father was appalled. Is that why he abandoned the Yiddish of his family and became a good Prussian? So his son could run to the "Jewish school"?
Page 9 - Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her" — from heaven on high I come to thee.
Page 139 - I want to assure you that we are doing everything in our power...
Page 60 - The first reaction was always to give them courage. Then you'd repress in your mind the question of if and when your turn would come. Information about what really happened in the east didn't start trickling in until 1942. Rumors were heard on BBC radio about "abuse" during the transports and in the concentration camps.
Page 55 - As long as you have a Christian mother— who protects us, don't you forget— you will not worship these Zionist idols!
Page 54 - It was the only alternative we had to a "field trip," since we were no longer allowed to go on outings outside of Berlin. Miriam and I sang two-part harmonies — beautiful, melancholic, kitschy songs; Brahms; Russian songs of the steppes; "No one loves you as I do.

References to this book

About the author (1999)

Gad Beck was the director of the Jewish Adult Education Center in Berlin, Germany, until his retirement. He is still very active as a public speaker on life in Berlin during the Nazi period.

Bibliographic information