Residents gathered for a vigil for the Aurora movie theater shooting victims in the parking lot of Kaiser Permanente in Aurora, CO. Friday, July 20, 2012.

In Loving Memory

Community of Lights join the vigil in memory of those who's life was lost, those who were hurt, those who are still fighting for their lives, and for family members and friends of the people of Aurora, Colorado.

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.

Gad Beck and his sister as Children

Photo: Courtesy of Judith Kessler

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. 

Alan Turing was once a hero in England. He helped the government crack German Codes during World War II and developed the Turning Machine, establishing the framework for today's modern computers and was generally regarded as one of the nation's brightest stars. Google celebrates "the father of computer science and artificial intelligence" with an interactive "intelligence test doodle". It's a kind of "Turing machine". Then, in 1952, Turing was outed, leading to a very public trial, conviction and chemically castrated for "gross indecency." He killed himself two years later.  Now, 60 years on, the British government is honoring Turing by including him in a series of twelve new "Britons of Distinction" stamps set to be released to coincide with the year of the 100 anniversary of his birth.

Alan Turning

June 23, 1912-June 7, 1954

George Broadhead, secretary of the Humanist group the Pink Triangle Trust, celebrated Turing's inclusion in a press release. "This is richly deserved," he wrote. "It is well known that Turing was gay, but perhaps not so well known that he was a staunch atheist.

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.

LaDonna Adrian Gaines

December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012

In Loving Memory