On 25 June, we come together to commemorate Gad Beck (1923–2012): a resident of Berlin’s Scheunenviertel, queer activist, and member of a Jewish underground group that provided food, shelter, and a sense of community to people living in hiding in Berlin during the Shoah.
As part of Zikaron BaSalon—an international grassroots initiative dedicated to intimate, shared remembrance—we will explore his extraordinary life through photographs, texts, and video testimonies.
The event will be held in English with German-language support.
On 24 June 2026, the fourteenth anniversary of the death of Gad Beck is commemorated—his yahrzeit, as it is known in Yiddish. We invite you to mark this occasion together with us on the evening of 25 June.
Born in Berlin in 1923, Gad Beck grew up in the Scheunenviertel, in what is today the district of Mitte. He celebrated his Bar Mitzvah at the Old Synagogue on Heidereutergasse, was detained during the “Fabrik-Aktion” and held on Rosenstraße—where his mother joined the protests demanding his release—and was interned in the Jewish Hospital in Wedding until he was liberated by the Red Army in 1945.
At the same time, Beck was a member of a Jewish underground resistance group that provided Jews living in hiding in Berlin with food, care, escape opportunities, and human companionship. Beck was queer, Jewish, and a Berliner—and he survived at a time when each of these identities placed his life at risk.
After returning to Germany in the 1970s, he took on a variety of roles within the Jewish community. From 1979 to 1988, he directed the Jewish Community Center on Fasanenstraße. In 1995, he published his autobiography An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin. His life story was later featured in the documentary Paragraph 175 (2000) and The Freedom to Tell: The Life of Gad Beck (2006).
Throughout the evening, we will explore Beck’s remarkable life through photographs, texts, and video testimonies in the format of Zikaron BaSalon—an international grassroots initiative that has brought people together for shared remembrance since 2011, in living rooms, communities, and public spaces around the world, alongside survivors and their descendants. To date, more than two million people in over 65 countries have taken part.
As part of the programme, we will also present contemporary memorial projects that honour queer neighbours and ancestors and keep their legacies alive.
The event will be held in English with accompanying German translation.
Admission begins at 6:00 pm. Entry will be restricted after 6:20 pm.
We recommend registering in advance via email at .
The museum is wheelchair accessible and includes an accessible restroom. If you have any questions regarding accessibility, please feel free to contact us in advance.
Mitte Museum
Pankstraße 47
13357 Berlin