Gad Beck, the last known gay Holocaust survivor, dies at 88

Gad Beck, the last known gay Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, died in Berlin. 

Beck, 88, who was a resistance fighter during World War II for Chug Chaluzi, an underground Zionist resistance youth group, died on June 24, just six days before his 89th birthday. Chug Chaluzi played a major role in saving German Jews and homosexuals during the war.

After he was betrayed by a Gestapo spy, Beck was taken to a German concentration camp in the waning days of the war. He was freed when the Allies liberated Europe.

Beck moved to Israel in the 1950s but returned to Germany in 1979. Following his return, he was appointed director of the Jewish Adult Education Center by the first post-Holocaust head of Berlin’s Jewish community.

He was the son of a Jewish father and a mother who converted to Judaism.