[1][2][3] Mirko Beer was born into an impoverished Jewish (by religion) family in Senta, a small border town, notable of its ethnic diversity, a short distance from Subotica and roughly equidistant between Budapest and Timișoara.
[4] At around the same time he joined Internationale Arbeiter-Hilfe (IAH / "Workers International Relief" / "Международная рабочая помощь"), a Berlin-based welfare organisation with close ties to Moscow.
He had been invited to move there by the architect-activist Heinrich Vogeler with whom, initially, he lived in the Hufeisensiedlung (housing estate) together with other socialists, communists and social democrats, in an "alternative residential community".
[4] The large number of injured workers – Communists and Nazis alike – that he treated in the Friedrichshain Hospital (as it was then known) helped him to appreciate that Fascism in German was already something to be taken seriously.
[4] While he was living in Berlin, Mirko Beer met Gerda Schneuer, a political soul-mate and an actress and photographer originally from Hamburg.
[1] Although he was much impressed by the international solidarity and the "almighty struggle in which an unarmed people were being seen to triumph over armede military formations" ("...großartigen Kampf, in dem ein waffenloses Volk ... die bewaffneten Formationen der Armee besiegte"), the aftermath of the Battle of Jarama in February 1937 convinced him of the need for the medical services on the republican side to be strengthened in order to cope with the scale of the casualties.
He served as editor in chief of the journal till January 1938, using it to set forth the difficulties and shortcomings of the battlefield medical services that he was experiencing.
He was also proud of the continuing training for the sick and less-badly wounded patients in the field hospitals and of the tailored courses for carers.
[3] "Goryan", as civil war comrades knew Mirko Beer at this time, was widely respected as an exceptional physician, but that did not mean that he was without enemies.
Although he later described the Argelès Camp as "hellish" ("die wahre Hölle"), he immediately turned his attention to the medical needs of fellow internees.
"Our favourite person was back with us" ("Unser liebster Mensch war wieder bei uns"), his wife, Gerda, later wrote.
[2] An alternative account of his death surfaced only in June 1990, after several years of Glasnost had led to the opening up of previously secret Soviet records.
According to this version, which was passed to his daughter through the German Red Cross, Mirko Beer did actually face a trial at which he received a five year prison sentence, but he died on 11 August 1942, not as a result of being shot, but from Dysentery.