An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiog) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Frank Heibert (Author), Allison Brown (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The publication of Richard Plant's The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (1986) opened public discussion of the treatment of gay people under the Third Reich. Since then, few books have revealed the personal stories of those who endured anti-gay German policies (I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual, 1995, is a notable exception), perhaps because many of the gay men who survived are now dead, or never felt safe coming out even after the war. All of this makes Beck's startling memoir a particularly important addition to both gay and Holocaust studies. Born in 1923 to a Jewish father and a Christian mother in a middle-class family, Beck was raised in both of his parents' religious traditions. When anti-Jewish policiesAinvolving housing relocation, forced labor and, finally, transport to the campsAbegan to be enforced, Beck helped set up resistance efforts to hide refugees and smuggle food and drugs into labor and concentration camps. In one terrifying episode, he donned a Hitler Youth uniform to rescue a lover from a deportation camp. Actively homosexual from an early age, Beck argues forthrightly and convincingly that his sexuality and love for menAwhich he movingly describes over the course of many adventuresAinfused most of his life and gave him the ability to fight for his own life and for others. His astute observations of daily life in Nazi Berlin, related in a chatty, humorous style, present a full, complex portrait of the times. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

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 Margot) born to an interfaith couple in Weimar Germany. Beck was one of those rare fortunate gay men who recognized his sexual orientation while still very young and who had a tolerant, loving, and supportive family who never for an instant were troubled by his lifestyle. He was equally lucky that his kin on the Christian side of the family felt the same toward their new Jewish relatives. Those facts are an inextricable element in his story of growing up Jewish in Nazi Germany. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Beck and his family found themselves, like other Jews, almost immediately stigmatized by law and separated forcibly from their non-Jewish friends and neighbors. After a lengthy series of humiliations, he was forced to leave his nondenominational school for a Jewish one. Beck is one of those quietly feisty types who are spurred by rejection into action; plunged into an entirely Jewish milieu, he quickly embraced the Zionist movement. Just as quickly, he embraced many of its male adherents, and the author is charmingly frank (but not explicit) about his sex life as well as his clandestine political activities. He would survive the war living as an ``illegal'' in Berlin, becoming a central figure in the underdocumented Zionist resistance that functioned despite the Nazis. Beck is a witty, chatty figure, and Heibert and Brown have done a splendid job of capturing and conveying his voice. The result is a readable and entertaining memoir of a terrible time. Beck is apparently at work on a sequel that takes him from the end of the war up to the present; its a book to look forward to. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 165 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (September 23, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299165000
• ISBN-13: 978-0299165000
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,064,062 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unparalleled love of life and indomitable spirit!, October 29, 1999

By A Customer

That any Jews survived Hitler's holocaust in Germany is remarkable; that they did it in the capital of the Third Reich is astonishing and that some of them were gay is almost unbelievable. Gad Beck's book starts out a bit slow, not quite dull but you hope it picks up its pace. Indeed, it does. Living in the underground, sought by the Gestapo (just being a Jew became illegal and transport to death remained a priority with the Nazis even as their regime was invaded and bombed) helping one another and living and loving as they best could is a gripping story. Told with humor and frankness, it's an excellent story. I can't wait for the next set of memoirs from Beck to be published.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Triumph of Will, May 1, 2007

By	Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) (Paperback)

Beck, Gad. "An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Germany, University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.

Triumph of Will

Amos Lassen and Literary Pride

We all have a great deal of trouble understanding the Holocaust and what it did to so many people. We have been slowly getting the stories of the Nazi persecution if gays and if one was both gay and Jewish, he had real troubles. Gad Beck was a man like that but he survived and was able to tell his story as he does so eloquently in "An Underground Life". Even though his book begins slowly, it picks up pace quickly and as you read your mouth falls open to see stories about man's inhumanity to man. When the Nazis began their reign of terror he was living underground and was sought by the Gestapo. Beck was an organizer and helped many who lived illegally by finding them shelter and food as well as providing a listening ear and support in any way that he could. The fact that he was gay was secondary to the fact that he was Jewish.
In this memoir Beck brings to life both the cruelty to the Jews but the cruelty to the gays as well. This is a shocking and horrifying account as he writes about a gay man's coming of age in Nazi Germany. It is an erotic tale but also shows how love should be considered. This was probably the first time in the modern age that the gay spirit managed to triumph over intolerance and bigotry--even against the greatest crime ever against humanity.
The fact that Beck survived in itself is miraculous but even more amazing is that he was able to write about what he endured. When Robert Plant published "The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals" in 1986, the door was opened to a new aspect of the Holocaust. Several personal accounts followed, but few have been published that talk about the Nazi treatment of gays ad I imagine that this is because so few survived and those that did could not think about what they had endured. This makes this book that much more valuable.
Beck's own story is unique in that he was born of a mixed marriage in 1923 to a Jewish father and a Christian mother thereby not Jewish according to strict Orthodox law. Nonetheless, the Nazis did not care--if he had a drop of Jewish blood, as far as they were concerned, he was Jewish. As the Nazi party rose to power and began their housing relocation plan, forced labor and transport to death camps, Beck organized a resistance movement to hide others and to smuggle food and drugs to them, He even once wore a Nazi uniform to rescue a doomed gay man from the camps. He does not in any way disguise his sexuality and he gives details of his own sexual liaisons. He gives us an amazing picture of the horror of Nazi rule. He was one of the fortunate gay men whom his parents loved and accepted his sexuality and was very lucky that the Christian side of his family felt the same. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, he was forced to attend a Jewish school to reinforce his identity and to be visible to the ruling party and he immersed himself in Judaism and embraced the idea of the Zionist movement. He also embraced a great many men and he hides nothing about his sex life (except for actual sexual descriptions) as well as writes openly about his secret political activities. He rose in power in the Zionist movement and became a central character in working to establish a Jewish homeland. He survived the Nazis by living illegally in Berlin. Because of that he was able to write this wonderful memoir.
This is a book that holds you from the beginning to the end, so much so that you want a sequel. He embraced his gayness at the same time that he embraced his Jewish--at a time when it meant death to be either. There are stories of betrayals and back stabbings and secret meetings and the memoir reads like a combination thriller/spy novel. That he survived s incredible and even more incredible is that he endured all that he did.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Triumph of the Gay Spirit, May 18, 2000

By	B. Dean Riner (Laguna Beach, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

Beck gives us a glimpse of a gay man's coming of age in Nazi Berlin. It is not only erotic but holds up a light by which all aspects of love should be measured. Once again, the Gay Spirit has triumphed over bigotry, intolerance, and in this case even the holocaust.