Lea Deutsch

Lea Deutsch (; 18 March 1927 – May 1943) was a Croatian Jewish child actress who was murdered in the Holocaust.

Early life Lea Dragica Deutsch was born in Zagreb to Croatian Jewish parents, Stjepan and Ivka (née Singer) Deutsch. Their surname was at the time also spelled . Even the famous Parisian firm Pathé heard of Deutsch and arrived in Zagreb to film a short documentary about her. She quickly rose to become a popular child actor.

In 1941, the Independent State of Croatia (, or NDH) began the implementation of race laws which prevented Deutsch from acting. Immediately after the establishment of the NDH, she was banned from the theater where she performed and a little later from a school that she attended. Deutsch's schoolmate Relja Bašić recalls:

Arrest, deportation and death Last known photo of Lea Deutsch, taken a few months before her death. In an attempt to save his family, Deutsch's father converted his family to Catholicism in June 1941. On 5 May 1943 Heinrich Himmler visited Zagreb. During his visit he pressed NDH leader Ante Pavelić to enact the "Final Solution" in his territory. In the coming days, Croatian and German officials began detaining the heads of the Jewish community in Zagreb and any remaining Jews who had been allowed to stay in the city up until that point.

Members of the national theatre intervened to try to help Deutsch and her family. Actors Tito Strozzi, Vika Podgorska, and Hindko Nučić, and the theatre's attendant Dušan Žanko (himself a member of the Ustaše) all attempted to save Deutsch's life.

In May 1943, Deutsch, her mother and her brother were deported to Auschwitz by the Nazis. Out of 75 prisoners during the six-day journey in the cattle wagon, without food and water, 25 did not survive. Lea Deutsch was among them, her heart having been weakened by diphtheria in her childhood. Her mother and brother were killed in Auschwitz. Her father, Stjepan, managed to save himself, hiding as a patient who suffered from infectious ocular trachoma at the ward of an ophthalmologist, Dr Vilko Panac, in the Sisters of Charity Hospital, Zagreb. Stjepan Deutsch survived the Holocaust and lived until 1959. He was buried in the Jewish part of the Mirogoj Cemetery, with Lea's photo on his tombstone.