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Elizabeth Deutsch Family Collection

 Collection
Identifier: AR 25179

Scope and Content Note

This collection documents the life of Elizabeth Deutsch. It includes correspondence, primarily postcards from parents and friends, as well as three letters from Deutsch's father; official documents relating to Deutsch's emigration out of Austria; materials about her parents, including certificates of trees planted in Israel in their honor, Hermann Deutsch's death certificate, and post-war correspondence with HIAS, the Red Cross, and the Jewish community of Vienna about Deutsch's efforts to determine her mother's fate; and papers from a successful request for monetary restitution for Deutsch's mother's jewelry.

Deutsch's personal materials include passports and identification cards; business references; poems; marriage documents; a typed copy of her birth certificate; a diploma; a certificate of English literacy; an undated German pamphlet for the Pension Lunacek in Abbazia, Italy (today Opatija, Croatia); and a very short handwritten biographical note.

The photographs include black-and-white leisure and vacation snapshots, dozens of photo-postcards of her parents and friends, and studio portraits of Deutsch and her friends. The photos range from the 1890s to the 1970s, but the bulk date from the 1920s and 1930s. Also included in the collection are five card-mounted photographs. These are one baby photo of Deutsch (4'' x 2.5''), circa 1907; two photos of Deutsch's mother (4'' x 2.5'' and 4'' x 3''), circa 1890s; one mounted snapshot of an unknown couple; and one large (7.5'' x 5''), heavily retouched photo of a man with a moustache, possibly Deutsch's father.

The collection also includes three photo albums. Most of the photographs are of vacations at various lake, beach and mountain locations, as well as general leisure photos. Some are labeled with dates, location, and/or names. Locations include Abbazia (Opatija), Budapest, the Gross Glockner, Salzburg, Venice, and Vienna.

Dates

  • Creation: ca 1890s-1982
  • Creation: Majority of material found within 1927-1964

Creator

Language of Materials

This collection is in German and English, with a small amount of Greek.

Access Restrictions

This collection is open to researchers.

Access Information

Readers may access the collection by visiting the Lillian Goldman Reading Room at the Center for Jewish History. We recommend reserving the collection in advance; please visit the LBI Online Catalog and click on the "Request" button.

Biographical Note

Elizabeth (Elisabeth) Deutsch (1906-2002) was born in Vienna, Austria. Her parents were Hermann Deutsch (1863-1941) and Bertha Weiss (1878-circa 1941). Deutsch left Austria in 1939 and lived with a friend in London before immigrating to the United States, settling in New York. Her parents stayed in Austria; her father died at their home in Vienna in 1941. Later that year, her mother was deported to Lodz and was murdered. In 1976, Elizabeth Deutsch was baptized before marrying Aristocles Andreades in a Greek Orthodox ceremony. She died in New York in 2002.

Extent

0.5 Linear Feet (1 box) plus one oversize item (OS 121)

Abstract

This collection documents the life of Elizabeth Deutsch. It includes correspondence and photographs, primarily from her time as a young person in Vienna. It also includes restitution materials.

Digitization Note

This collection was digitized in its entirety.

Related Material

Two photographs from this collection were previously digitized and can be seen here.

Separated Material

The audio cassette "Witnesses to the Holocaust," narrated by Miles Lerman and published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (1994), was removed to the LBI AV collection.

Processing Information

Materials were rehoused and deduplicated. Loose photographs were grouped by size and format and placed in folders. Loose photos in albums were placed in folders and left in the album.

Title
Guide to the Elizabeth Deutsch (1906-2002) Collection undated, circa 1890s-1982, bulk 1927-1964 AR 25179
Author
Processed by Kevin Schlottmann
Date
© 2014
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
Description is in English.
Sponsor
Processing made possible by the Leon Levy Foundation and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany. Digitization made possible by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany.

Revision Statements

  • 2014-June-25: T.R. Mendenhall: added links to folder-level digitized manifestations of collection materials.

Repository Details

Part of the Leo Baeck Institute Repository

Contact:
15 West 16th Street
New York NY 10011 United States