Tag #130819 - Interview #78461 (Stefan Guth)

When the war was over, I went to an ordinary state high school. And back then, we had religion classes in high school, and because we were Jews, we had two classes a week here, in the synagogue’s building, with Rabbi Deutsch. Once a week he taught us two hours, with one small break between them. I can tell you, the prophet Habakuk I will never forget! There was a big fuss about it. The story goes like this: Deutsch bacsi was deaf, almost deaf. And he always wore a hearing aid, with something in his ear and a round thing on his chest, with a battery in it. But we kids knew he didn’t hear well with it either because he always said, ‘Quiet, children!’ when we didn’t make a sound, and when we were noisy, he didn’t say anything. He tried to conceal the fact that he didn’t hear well, but we figured it out. And whenever he asked us something he had taught us about, we only moved our lips and that was it! Deutsch bacsi would say, ‘Good, Iovan, good!’

I had a good friend, Kurt Sapira, his father was a famous doctor here in Brasov. And one time, during the first class, Deutsch bacsi asked Kurt something. Kurt knew, of course, that he didn’t hear well, so he just mimed, moved his lips, and he was off the hook. After the break, the first person he calls out is I. And he asks me about the prophet Habakuk. ‘Habakuk it is!’, I said to myself and started to move my lips. And Deutsch bacsi said, ‘Yes, yes’, and drew closer and closer to me. And when he reached a convenient distance, he slapped me so hard that I thought my head would fly right off my shoulders! Who the hell knew Deutsch bacsi had changed his batteries during the break! The row that followed was terrible, he called my mother to the synagogue, told her how I had made fun of religion, and so on. Of course my mother could hardly restrain herself from bursting out laughing, and at home my parents made a lot of fun about the whole situation; they didn’t punish me. They just asked me how hard the rabbi slapped me! My father used to call Rabbi Deutsch ‘aldott rossz ember’ in Hungarian, that is a blessed wicked man; Rabbi Deutsch was very respected and feared, but unfortunately not very liked in the community in Brasov.