Short description
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.
Long description
That Gad Beck, a Jew in the Berlin of Nazi Germany, lived through the Holocaust at all is surprising. The fact that he lived it as a homosexual Jew who spent the entire war funnelling food, money and clothing to hidden Jews and helping smuggle others out of the country is amazing. It was love that gave him both the impetus and the strength to fight. The rise of National Socialism was tearing his family apart, destroying his school, thwarting his dream of emigration to Israel. Then the Nazis came for Manfred Lewin, Beck's first love, and for his family. Gad's love for Manfred gave him the courage to don a three-sizes-too-large Hitler Youth uniform, march into the transit camp where the Lewins were being held, and demand - and obtain, to his astonishment - the release of his lover. But Manfred would not leave without his family, and so went back into the camp. The Lewins did not survive. Coming of age as a gay man during the war and maintaining a series of romantic relationships while carrying on his resistance work, Beck reveals a tenacity and irrepressible spirit that is his real legacy. His determination to keep loving, living and believing in every human possibility without compromise - even in the face of the unthinkably monstrous - makes this quite a different story of the Holocaust.
Review
Born to an interfaith couple, Beck . . . discusses the near-simultaneous embrace of both his Jewish and his gay identities in the most unlikely of settings: a Nazi Germany that was intent on eliminating both groups. -- Publishers Weekly