James Deutsch

James Deutsch was born in Berlin on 12 June 1886, the son of Jewish husband-and-wife Max and Helene (née Grurau) Deutsch. He and his sister Else, who was two years younger than him, grew up in Berlin, where James attended grammar school. After graduating with his Abitur school-leaving certificate, he studied dentistry in Würzburg and Berlin from 1905 to 1909 and gained a doctorate, becoming Dr. med. dent. Deutsch. On 27 February 1915 he married Margarete Maria Hirse, a gymnastics teacher, at Mitte registry office, Berlin. His wife was from Bromburg (Polish: Bydgoszcz), in what was then the province of Posen, and a Protestant. She had a seven-year-old son from a previous relationship, who lived with them. James Deutsch did not have any children.
In 1925 he started working for the AOK health insurance fund, first in Elberfeld and Gera, then in Lichtenberg. In 1928 he was employed as an oral surgeon at the AOK dental clinic in Steglitz, Berlin. On 12 April 1933, he and two Jewish colleagues were dismissed without notice, after which he remained unemployed.
On 27 May 1942, James Deutsch was arrested and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Five months later, on 29 October 1942, he was murdered there.