By Leon Cohen
Belgium-born Milwaukeean Henri Zvi Deutsch, 76, who died last week of kidney failure, was a scholarly man, a playwright and teacher, and a very kind man, say people who remember him.
“When he heard about human suffering, you could see it in his eyes and his whole body. It was like the pain of the world was in him and on his shoulders. That’s what I remember most about him,” said Steve Baruch, Ph.D., executive director of the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the education program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
And he was “a gifted intellectual,” said longtime friend Rabbi Steve (aka Betzalel) Mandelman. “He loved reading and writing” and “could talk seriously about anything from Talmud to [linguist and political activist Noam] Chomsky.”
Nevertheless, Deutsch was also capable of taking controversial stands. When a group of neo-Nazis held marches in Milwaukee in the 1970s, the Milwaukee Jewish community was divided on how best to respond.
Deutsch helped found the Concerned Jewish Citizens, a group that, according to his wife Suzanna (nee Sand), “took an aggressive stance. We would demonstrate or counter-demonstrate where [the neo-Nazis] were.”
“He had come from Europe, where Jews were unable to take an overt stand,” his wife explained. “They were not as free as we are. Where we have freedom, it would have been shameful not to do it.”
Born in Antwerp to a father who was a diamond broker, Deutsch was 9 when his family fled the Nazis, going first to France. The Nazis murdered nearly all of his extended family that remained behind.
“One of the reasons he was so involved in Jewish education and Holocaust remembrance was that this was a legacy he wanted to leave to his children and grandchildren,” said Suzanna Deutsch.
“He wanted them to inherit his love for the Jewish people and the history of the Jewish people, and his willingness to stand up and be an advocate for the Jewish people and to tell our history.”
Remembering Mendes
But he was not one who divided the non-Jews of the world into those who hate Jews and those who are indifferent to Jews’ suffering. In the 1980s, he learned that the reason his family was able to leave Europe and come to New York City was because the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France, Aristedes de Sousa Mendes, gave his father a visa.
In defiance of his government’s policies and orders, Mendes, who was Catholic, issued on his own authority some 30,000 visas to Jews and others fleeing the Nazis. He paid for it by being dismissed from his post and dying in poverty and disgrace.
After Deutsch learned about this, “he considered it his goal to educate as many people as possible about Mendes,” said Suzanna Deutsch. He appeared in a documentary film about Mendes, became a friend of Mendes’ son, and attended United Nations sessions that honored Mendes and other rescuers.
“He helped many Gentiles understand the enormity and horrendous meaning of the Holocaust,” said Mandelman. “On the other hand, he was careful to make sure people knew he was saved by the kindness of Gentiles.”
In fact, as active as he was in Jewish causes, he also was involved in civil rights issues generally, working on integrating Milwaukee schools in the 1970s, according to his wife.
“He was a wonderful, passionate, insightful man who cared deeply about the Jewish people and all people,” said Baruch. “[His death is] a big loss for his family and the community.”
His teaching career in Milwaukee, where he and his wife settled in 1972, took him into both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities.
He worked as education director at the Senior Action Coalition; at Washington High School, Marquette University and the Sacred Heart School of Theology; and at several religious schools, including Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue, Temple Menorah, Congregations Anshai Lebowitz and Beth Israel.
According to Baruch, Deutsch received from CJL the Norman and Ethel Gill Incentive for Teachers Award in 1991 for “the most creative teaching project for that year.”
Deutsch had academic training as a playwright, including a master’s degree from Columbia University. According to his wife, he wrote “20 or so” plays, many of them for children and dealing with such issues as racial equality.
In fact, his playwriting led him to Israel, where he met his wife. In 1963, he went to Israel to write plays and stayed at a youth hostel. There, he met his wife. They ended up living in Israel for seven years, while he taught at Tel Aviv University, and two of their three children were born there.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by daughter Yael (Shai) Levy of New York City; sons Nathaniel (Miriam) Deutsch of Woodside, Calif., and David (Aliza) Deutsch of New York City; sister Josette Nelson of Westchester, N.Y.; and four grandchildren.
Rabbi Shlomo Pontos officiated at the funeral on Feb. 5. Burial was in Spring Hill Cemetery.
The family would appreciate memorial contributions to the Jewish Home and Care Center or Hillel Academy.
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