By Rebecca Goodman
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Mr. Deutscher

AMBERLEY VILLAGE - Erwin Deutscher escaped Austria by way of Palestine just three weeks before Kristallnacht in 1938.

When the 15-year-old left his parents, he didn't know if he would see them again.

Indeed, his mother was arrested on a trumped-up charge and jailed in Vienna for six months, and his husky father wasted away to 80 pounds while in the Dachau concentration camp.

Mr. Deutscher's family survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the United States.

The younger Deutscher, who was reunited with his parents when he moved to Cincinnati in 1951, wrote about his life in Adventures on Three Continents, published last year by Bloch Publishing Company, New York.

Mr. Deutscher, 80, a retired insurance executive with Metropolitan Life, died of complications from cancer Aug. 14, a day after being taken to Hospice of Cincinnati in Blue Ash.

"He was at home (in Amberley Village) until the last day," said his daughter Naomi L. Deutscher of Boston.

Born in Vienna in 1923, Mr. Deutscher had his formal education interrupted when he fled to Palestine with a youth organization called Hashomer Hadati - the Religious Zionist Pathfinders.

Three weeks later, his father was arrested on Kristallnacht and spent time at both Dachau and Buchenwald. Unknown to their son, the Deutschers escaped the Nazis in 1940 and hid out in the Apennines, subsisting on whatever they could forage, for two years.

Mr. Deutscher did not learn of their fate until he received a Red Cross cable informing him they had reached the United States in 1942. While his parents escaped, he lost scores of relatives in the Holocaust.

In Palestine, Mr. Deutscher joined the Haganah, an underground self-defense force. He married Hannah Katz in the newly-formed state of Israel in 1949. They moved to Cincinnati, where his parents had opened Deutscher's Kosher Restaurant on Seventh Street downtown, in 1951.

He completed Certified Life Underwriter courses and received a master's degree in Hebrew letters from Hebrew Union College.

"He always looked at his circumstances in a positive light," said his daughter, "even when he was separated from his parents for years and never knew if he would see them again.

In addition to his daughter, survivors include his wife, Hannah H. Deutscher; another daughter, Ruthie D. Deutscher of Northside; a son, E. Michael Deutscher of Brooklyn; a brother, Siegmund Deutscher of Colorado Springs; and three grandchildren.

Services have been held. Burial was at New Hope Cemetery in Covedale.

Memorials: Hospice of Cincinnati, 4310 Cooper Road, Cincinnati 45242; or American Red Magen David for Israel, c/o Ernst Kahn, 2515 Twigwood Lane, Cincinnati 45237.

E-mail rgoodman@enquirer.com