The Beck's financial situation had begun to deteriorate even before the Nazi rise to power, forcing Gerhard's father to downsize the mail order business. Until its demise in 1935, the twins also participated in a mixed youth group of Germans and Jews known as the German-Jewish Ring. He and his sister attended a public school in Weissensee until 1934 when increasing anti-Semitism led them to switch to the Jewish School for Boys and Girls on the Grosse Hamburger Strasse. Although neither side of the family initially favored the marriage, they soon grew to embrace one another, and Gerhard's childhood was marked by easy acceptance and observance of both religious traditions. In 1927 the family moved to a larger apartment in the Weissensee district of Berlin. They were married in 1920 after her conversion to Judaism, and settled into an apartment above the business. Gerhard's mother, who hailed from a Protestant family, met her future husband when she went to work in the telephone exchange at his company. His father, who had grown up in an observant Jewish home in Vienna, moved to Berlin in the inter-war period and set up a mail order firm called Heinrich Beck and Company. He was born, along with his twin sister, Margot (Miriam), on Jin Berlin. Biography Gerhard (Gad) Beck is the son of Heinrich and Hedwig (Kretchmar) Beck.
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