Sexual relations between men had been criminalized by Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code since the unification of Germany in 1871. The Nazi regime amended the law in 1935, granting the state stronger legal authority in the regime's campaign against gay men. The number of men arrested under Paragraph 175 skyrocketed, and state persecution intensified following the creation of the Reich Office for Combating Abortion and Homosexuality in 1936. Gay men and others suspected of sexual relations between men were arrested and sent to prison or “preventive detention” in concentration camps like Sachsenhausen.1 Roughly 65 percent of these people did not survive the camps.
The featured memento book was given to Gad Beck by his first love when the two men were parted by Nazi persecution in 1941. Born as Gerhard Beck in 1923, he survived the Holocaust by concealing his identity and living underground in Berlin.2 As a gay, communist, half-Jewish man, Beck was excluded from the Nazis' so-called "national community" ("Volksgemeinschaft") for multiple parts of his identity. Although the intersecting pieces of Beck’s identity may have complicated the ways he experienced Nazi persecution, Beck was also able to turn to his different groups of friends and acquaintances for support.
As a young man, Beck was active in a Zionist youth movement that advocated for Jewish relocation to what was then Palestine. It was here that Beck first met Manfred Lewin—the man he would later describe as his first great love—in 1940. Beck later described how his secret romance with Lewin developed in the context of the increasing social isolation of Jews in Germany and the Nazi regime's persecution of gay men.3 While surviving as a half-Jewish man living in Nazi Berlin, Beck also felt forced to conceal his relationship with Lewin from the outside world—including his own family.
In September 1941, all Jews in Germany were ordered to wear a yellow Star of David, and mass deportations to concentration camps began in earnest. Jewish organizations were also dissolved—including the youth group to which Beck and Lewin belonged. Lewin gave Beck this small, handmade book titled "Do you remember, when" as a memento of their time together and a token of his affection. The book begins with a dedication that recalls happier times: outings their group had taken together, inside jokes about their friends, and the time they had staged a production of Friedrich Schiller's play Don Carlos. Beck later recalled his reaction to the book: "The message was clear: Should we be torn apart someday, we could still count on our love and would always hear each other's call for help. His poem moves me to this day."4
In late 1942, Lewin's family were ordered to report to what we now know was a "pre-deportation camp" on Große Hamburger Straße. In an attempt to rescue Lewin, Beck acquired a Hitler Youth uniform and traveled to Große Hamburger Straße. Deceiving the SS official in charge, Beck managed to escort Lewin out of the camp. Lewin, however, could not bring himself to leave his family: "If I abandon them now," he told Beck, "I could never be free." Lewin returned to the camp to be with his family, and Beck would never see him again. Lewin and his entire family were killed at Auschwitz. Beck himself managed to survive the war in the heart of Nazi Berlin. He attributes this to a number of factors, including his status as a half-Jewish man, his connections to various underground movements (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and a certain degree of sexual barter—in one case with a young man who was an avowed member of the Nazi Party.5
Beck’s and Lewin's story reminds us that people’s identities often impacted their experiences and chances for survival during the Holocaust, and it raises several questions. Were Lewin and Beck targeted as Jews, as gay men, or as Jewish gay men? Does the fact that they successfully hid their relationship to avoid arrest influence our understanding of their experiences under Nazi persecution? In what ways might Beck’s identity as a half-Jewish man who could pass as a so-called “Aryan” German have helped him survive?