num_pages: 176
description: “So intense and authentic that [the] narrative pulls you along.”—Christopher Lehman–Haupt, The New York TimesGad Beck, a half-Jewish German, managed to evade the Nazis and live illegally, underground, in Berlin throughout the duration of World War II. While that in itself was notable, Beck didn’t simply exist in some nocturnal world of hiding. Coming of age as a gay man during the war, he also helped organize a Jewish youth group, free friends from the Gestapo, and maintain a series of romantic relationships. The result is An Underground Life: a Holocaust memoir that conveys the surreal horror of the times but also focuses more on living than dying, and captures a life that was fueled as much by a sense of romance, adventure, and humor, as it was by suffering.
language: English
title: An Underground Life:  Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin
titlecomplete: An Underground Life:  Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin
genres: Holocaust, Biography, History, World War II, Historical, War, Queer, Nonfiction, Memoir, LGBT
ratings_count: 401
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Lambda Literary Award
category: Gay Biography/Autobiography
publisher: University of Wisconsin Press