Alex Beck
Alex Beck was born on March 23, 1919 in Tisza Ujlak, a town located near the Tisza River in Transcarpathia, which at the time was located in Czechoslovakia. Although he had excellent elementary school grades, because of corruption, Alex was prevented from attending a Gymnasia, a school that prepares students for entry into university. He ended up in a public school where he was exposed to anti-Semitism from his fellow students. In the 1927 pogrom in Oradea, he and his siblings witnessed a Romanian student convention turn into a physical attack on the Jewish community. From middle school through high school, he attended the “Gymnasia Ha’Ivirt” in Mukachevo (Hebrew Gymnasia) in Munkacz, Hungary – a school that was similar to the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, in that its student population was Jewishly diverse. It was at the Gymnasia that Alex became fluent in Hebrew and became an ardent Zionist.
When he graduated from high school, the Hungarian government had already become aligned with the Nazis and they were actively recruiting all young men to serve in its army. Alex successfully obtained a deferral and was able to enroll in the University. While in the university, Alex was employed as a Hebrew teacher. One of his students was Hannah Sennesh. In October 1943, Alex was taken to a Hungarian Nazi-run labor camp (Arbeitslager). He escaped from the camp on October 28, 1944, one day before the camp’s inhabitants were scheduled to be liquidated and transferred to Auschwitz. After hiding in the countryside for a few weeks, Alex met up with the Russian army which was entering Hungary as the war in Europe was ending. He was liberated and shortly thereafter reunited with his parents, both of whom miraculously also avoided deportation to the concentration camps.
Although his father passed away shortly afterwards, Alex and his mother managed to migrate to Palestine – with forged papers – by way of a transit camp in Italy. Alex’s brother and sister were already in Palestine, having made aliyah in the 1930s. He met his wife Ruth, a New York City public school teacher visiting Tel-Aviv, during her visit to Palestine in 1947. They married in March, 1948 at his family’s hotel (The Savoy Hotel) in Tel-Aviv. Alex joined Ruth in NYC in the early 1950s.