Beams of light > Candle lights > Remembrance
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Gad Beck, an anti-Nazi Zionist resistance fighter and the last known gay Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, died on Sunday June 24, 2012 in Berlin. He passed away in a senior citizens' home six days before his 89th birthday, which would have been on June 30. Beck was a pioneering gay activist and educator in a severely anti-homosexual, repressive post-World War II German society. He was famous for his witty, lively style of speaking.
On a German talk show, he said, "The Americans in New York called me a great hero. I said no... I'm really a little hero." Perhaps the single most important experience that shaped his life was the wartime effort to rescue his boyfriend. Beck donned a Hitler Youth uniform and entered a deportation center to free his Jewish lover Manfred Lewin, who had declined to separate himself from his family. The Nazis would later deport the entire Lewin family to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.
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Memorial Day, an American holiday observed on the last Monday of May, honors men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971.
Many Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries or memorials, holding family gatherings and participating in parades. Unofficially, at least, it marks the beginning of summer.
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December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012
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Dick Clark stood as an avatar of rock 'n' roll virtually from its birth and, until his death on April 18, 2012 at age 82, as a cultural touchstone for boomers and their grand kids alike. His identity as "the world's oldest teenager" became strained in recent years, as time and infirmity caught up with his enduring boyishness. But he owned New Year's Eve after four decades hosting his annual telecast on ABC from Times Square.
And as a producer and entertainment entrepreneur, he was a media titan: his Dick Clark Productions supplied movies, game shows, beauty contests and more to TV, and, for a time in the 1980s, he boasted programs on all three networks.
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Webcams have been switched on at the Statue of Liberty during a ceremony marking the monument's 125th anniversary. The Internet-connected cameras will let viewers gaze out at New York Harbor and see visitors on the grounds below.
