Eric Saks was born in Vienna, Austria in 1926. When the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, his family went into hiding in Vienna for several months. They escaped to Italy, but there was trouble on the train at the border. Men from the Italian side, who were not partisan to Hitler, helped get the train across the border by pushing it. Eric and his family stayed in Milan and then Turin. Through the British consulate, they secured visas to Paris. From Paris, they went on to Antwerp, where they were able to secure visas to the United States.
The Saks family arrived in Utica, New York in 1939. After living several years in New York City, Eric enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in the Pacific during the war. Because of his language abilities, Eric was put into the Army Specialized Training Program to learn Japanese. He became a medic and was part of the clean-up in Japan after the war.
After being discharged, Eric continued his education at the University of Chicago and then worked as a Public Health Officer for the Veterans Administration in New York. Later he worked as a federal health officer at the border in McAllen, Texas. He met his wife, Rochelle Reiger, in Brooklyn, and they married in 1960. Eric returned for a time to the military, in the U.S. Navy. After his retirement in 1982, Eric and Rochelle moved to El Paso, Texas. Eric died on November 11, 2011.