Dr. Ed Beck is a retired Professor of Psychology and Professional Counselor having served teaching and Counseling positions in the City University of New York, New York University, Rutgers University, Penn State-Harrisburg and the University of Pennsylvania. He was also the founder and director of the Susquehanna Institute. He has Bachelors and Masters Degrees from New York University and a Doctorate in Counseling Psychology from University of PA.
Esther S. Beck is a retired special educator having held professional and administrative positions at the Shield of David Institute in Bronx, NY, The Infant Development Program and Special Education Advisor and later Division Chief in the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Bureau of Special Education Her Bachelor and Masters Degrees are from New York University.
Dr. Beck’s paternal Grandparents, Helene and Oskar, were successful haberdashers and art collectors living in Vienna with their son, 17 year old son, Gustav, Ed’s father. Sensing things were getting dangerous for Jews with the rise of Hitler in Germany, members of Oskar’s family moved to New York. Oskar was reluctant, but was tipped off by Gentile friends that the Anschluss was in the works and so they sent their art collection to family in NY and made arrangements for Gustav to get a visa to go to NYC. The family got their visa just as the Anschluss occurred and Gustav was the first to arrive in NYC where he was sponsored by friends of the family. His parents followed a few months later. He was detained by the Nazis on his way out and never talked about his experiences except in his testimony. Gustav’s autobiography was published in 2013 “Success By Overcoming Hurdles” He published Helene’s, his mother, biography in 2014, “The Adventures of Helene.”
Dr. Beck shares his wife’s family story as well as his own family’s. Esther’s parents, Moric and Dora ( Fuchs) Sawicki, both Holocaust Survivors from Poland, had a tailor shop and dry cleaning business. While we don’t know much about Esther’s father’s Holocaust history and family, other than he escaped Nazi captivity and wound up fighting with the Russians.
Esther’s father met her mother when the Russians liberated their camp and they lived in a Displaced Persons’ Camp in Feldefing, Germany where Esther was born in 1946 and they lived there until 1954 when HIAS moved them to resettle in Rochester, NY. Esther’s mother and two surviving sisters came from a very large, but poor Jewish family in a small village in Poland. Her uncles were sent to ghettos and work camps and her aunts escaped selection for extermination because the guards thought they didn’t look Jewish. Esther’s Mother’s testimony is archived in the Shoah Foundation.
Esther and Ed are co-founders of the Harrisburg (PA) Sons and Daughters of Holocaust Survivors and are members of the Sons and Daughters of Holocaust Survivors of Philadelphia.
