Friends and colleagues of Frank Felix Polk, the Orinda Holocaust survivor killed in his home Oct. 14, are distraught that salacious details reported in the press are obscuring the life and work of a man described as “incredibly sensitive” and “born to be a therapist the way Barry Bonds was born to be a baseball player.”
The 70-year-old Austrian-born psychologist’s body was discovered in their home on Miner Road by his 15-year-old son, who later called the police.
His wife of more than 20 years, Susan Polk, 44, has been charged with beating and stabbing her husband to death and is being held without bail at the Martinez Detention Facility.
“He always had an optimism about him, a youthful optimism. My father asked him how he could be so optimistic, having had a horrible Holocaust experience, and he said something enigmatic. He said because he’d had such a terrible Holocaust experience he could be as optimistic as he was,” recalled friend and longtime patient Joel Tepper.
“He survived. He saw the good in people, saw the good in all the people who helped him to survive all along the way. He thought good was stronger than evil, although, ironically, I’m not sure at the end that was true for him.”
Born to an affluent Austrian family in 1932, Polk’s young life was interrupted by his father’s arrest by the Nazis and his family’s flight to the French countryside.
Polk’s father was later reunited with the family, but left again to fight for the British Expeditionary Force. Polk, his twin brother, sister and mother eked out an Anne Frank-type existence for more than a year, living quietly, but terrified, in the attic of a farmhouse that was billeted out to Nazi soldiers.
Polk’s father placed an ad in a French newspaper searching for his family, and they were once again reunited in Marseilles. The family escaped into Spain, with Polk being forced to convert to Catholicism to gain entry to the country.
This conversion served as a source of humor for Polk throughout his life according to friends, who described the psychologist as “culturally Jewish.”
Media outlets have jumped on the Polk case, the first Orinda homicide since the mid-1990s. Relatives of Susan Polk have been quoted saying Felix Polk mentally and physically abused his wife and their three children and seduced Susan, a former patient, when she was a minor. At the time of his murder, the couple had been separated for roughly 18 months and were in the process of divorcing.
Polk’s friends and colleagues say the allegations do not match the man they knew.
“He was a good man. I don’t care what’s being said. It’s craziness,” said fellow psychologist Robert Wilk.
The newspaper details “are certainly different from the man I knew,” said friend and former student Diane Bieda. “I get angry about it. I don’t think it’s fair to rake somebody through the coals when they’re not here to defend themselves. It’s unjust.”
Yet friends and co-workers acknowledge that Polk’s home life was tumultuous, and the Orinda police reported several trips to the Polk home on domestic disturbance complaints.
“He was terrified of Susan,” said longtime friend and fellow psychologist Sheila Byrns. “I know a year and a half ago he told me he barricaded himself in his room. He told me Susan bought a gun and threatened to kill him. Joking as he would, he’d say stress is a great way to lose weight.”
Polk’s patients also detected their therapist’s angst.
“I knew he was in trouble at home. He was having trouble with the kids and trouble with his wife, though obviously no one could have imagined it would turn out as it did,” said Tepper.
“I asked him about his marriage and he said the first 20 years were very happy, but about 10 years ago his wife had gotten [multiple sclerosis], and it had advanced progressively. He confided in me that he thought her M.S. was affecting her not only physically but psychologically, and I shared that with the detective in charge of this case.”
And Bieda recalled, “The last time I saw him, I asked him how it was going and he said, ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.'”
Polk, who practiced in Berkeley and was a psychology instructor at Argosy University in Point Richmond, is survived by the three sons he had with Susan Polk, ages 15, 17 and 19. He is also survived by a son and daughter from a previous marriage.
“What I read in the paper and the person I spent a year with are two different worlds. I see him as a very thoughtful person. A person who was able to see through some of the facades we as human foster upon ourselves,” said Dr. John Hart, a former patient of Polk’s.
“I was very surprised and happy to see how gifted and talented Felix Polk was. I wasn’t quite sure people like that really existed.”