At block 45 of the memorial on the Commemorative stone for members of the Allied Air Force.

A flat inscribed stone remembering the Allied Airmen who were prisoners at Buchenwald and the two who died while in captivity.

1LT Levitt Beck was born on Harris County Texas in 1920.  He served in the 514^th Fighter Squadron, 406^thFighter “The Raiders” Group flying a P-47 aircraft.

He was shot down in France on 29 June 1944 in P-47D  (42-8473) on an Armed Reconnaissance mission to the Mantes-la-Jolie / Gassicourt area in France.  Beck initially evaded capture, but was later captured by a French turned Gestapo operative.  He was made a prisoner and interned at the Buchenwald concentration camp. He became ill from maltreatment and undernourishment and died in the camp on 29 November 1944. His remains were never found and fellow camp inmates who believe he was incinerated in Buchenwald the day following his death. 

Beck is remembered at the Tablets of the Missing at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial.

The main Buchenwald Concentration Camp was liberated by the 6^th “Super Sixth” Armored Division and the 80^th Infantry Division in April 1945.  Sub camps of Buchenwald were liberated by the 2^nd, 30^th, 69^th, 83^rd and 89^th Infantry Divisions.

In memory of the Allied Airmen of American, British,

Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and

Jamaican Nationalities, incarcerated here

From 20 August to 28 November 1944

78286 LT Levitt C. Beck Jr. USAAF

and 78383 F/O Philip Hemmens RAF

Did not survive the horrors of Buchenwald

Lest we Forget