Gad Beck

Gad has been an inspiration to me since I started this project.  I find his life and story incredibly heroic. He had recently passed away when I started really formulating the work I wanted to do, and I so wished I had been able to speak with or meet him. In every interview with him I’ve watched, and in reading his book, he has this incredible directness and willfulness, but tempered with a sly smile and appreciation for the joys in life no matter the hand you are dealt. As a teenager he bravely worked in the underground resistance in Berlin, keeping Jews hidden, safe, and delivering supplies and fake identity documents. At this time he met his great love Manfred Lewin.  When Manfred and his entire Jewish family were taken by the Nazis, Gad went undercover in a Nazi uniform, and through sheer will and cleverness marched into the camp and demanded the release of his boyfriend. Amazingly, he succeeded and got Manfred out.  However, Manfred couldn’t bear to abandon his whole family and returned to the camp, and they were all killed.  Despite this, Gad kept fighting throughout the war, constantly on the move as a leader in the underground, and he even survived being captured and interrogated for the last month of the war before liberation.  Gad never hid who he was, having come out at the age of 12, and lived proudly.  I will never forget his bravery.