Beckman was born on 15 December 1929 in Rachov, now Rachiv, in the Carpathian Mountains, which was then the most easterly part of Czechoslovakia.
Before the Holocaust, in the 1930’s, Jews were well integrated into society with other survivor testimonies recalling that children from all religions would play together with some gentiles even speaking Yiddish.
Beckman’s parents were David and Malka and she had no siblings.