Biography
Fred Deutsch (born Bedrich Deutsch) is the son of Dr. Brunno Deutsch and Eliska (Huberova) Deutschova. He was born on November 13, 1932 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, where his father was a dentist. Bedrich has one sibling, Zuzana (b. 1925), a half-sister from his father's first marriage. In January 1939 the family moved to Uhresky Brod, Brunno's hometown, where the family owned a second home. In the summer of 1939, six months after the establishment of the German protectorate over Bohemia and Moravia, Bedrich's father was forced to abandon his dental practice. Two years later, when the town became an assembly area for Jews from the whole of southeast Moravia, the Deutsch family was compelled to move into a ghetto that was called the Judenstadt. At this time most of their possessions were confiscated. In 1942 the Judenstadt was enclosed by a wall, and all Jewish residents were forced to register for deportation to Theresienstadt. Each was given a number, a weight allowance for their luggage and a date to report to the railroad station. On December 25, 1942, three weeks before their scheduled deportation, the Deutsch family fled over the border into Slovakia in an escape organized by Eliska's father, Dr. Adolf Huber, a well-loved physician in western Slovakia. The family had to leave behind Brunno's mother and older sister who were too frail to make the 30-mile trip. They later perished. After arriving in Slovakia, the Deutsch and Huber families went into hiding, aided by many former patients of Dr. Huber, including Milan Slavik, Martin Ragala and Alexander Klein. They lived in a series of attics and barns in the vicinity of Nove Mesto. In the summer of 1943, while hiding on a farm owned by Milan Slavik in the district of Stara Tura, the family was discovered by a unit of Germans and Hlinka Guardsmen during an anti-partisan raid. The Deutsches were permitted to remain where they were on condition they report the following day to the military camp in Nove Mesto nad Vahom. Before the unit withdrew, however, the commander ordered one of his soldiers to rape Bedrich's mother in front of the rest of the family. The Deutsches did not report to the military camp. Instead they moved to another bunker hastily constructed by Slavik and his son in a more remote area. Subsequently, Slavik was arrested and his farm burned down for his efforts to hide Jews and help partisans. He was sent to Dachau and died in the Dachau sub-camp of Allach in May 1945. In September 1943, after living in the new bunker for a few months, Bedrich was issued a false school certificate and sent to live with a Lutheran pastor, Reverend Pavel Chorvat, in the Slovak village of Slatina nad Bebravou. The pastor sheltered Bedrich until June 1944 when villagers began to suspect that the boy might be Jewish. Bedrich was then sent back to his parents. Upon his return he learned that his sister Zuzana had departed and was living under false papers in Bratislava. During the final year of the war the Deutsch family was aided by Martin Ragala who brought them food and later built them a new bunker. As the fighting wound down, the family felt secure enough to move to a barn on the Ragala farm in Moravske Lieskove. Bedrich was liberated in May 1945 at the age of thirteen by units of the Romanian army that had switched sides. After the war Bedrich joined his family in Uhresky Brod. A short time later the family moved to Znojmo, where Brunno was given a dental practice that had been confiscated from German collaborators. From 1948 until April 1949 Bedrich attended vocational school in Svitavka, where he was trained as a weaver. Upon the conclusion of his course he immigrated to Israel with the Youth Aliyah program, sailing on April 26, 1949 from Bari, Italy on board the ship Galila.
