Max Moses Deutsch's Obituary
It is our painful duty to share the sad news of the passing of Max Deutsch, our adored husband, father, grandad, brother, and uncle. Max was a beam of light and sanity in a world darkened by madness, and his absence impoverishes us all.
A generous, humorous, accomplished man who made everyone’s life better for knowing him, Max overcame extraordinary obstacles with determination, amazing force of will and sagacity to lead an exemplary and remarkable life, full of love given and received. Max was the youngest surviving child, born into a large Jewish family of modest means in rural Hungary in 1930. He often told us that, as a youngster, if he did not wake up early enough, he wouldn’t have shoes to wear that day.
Shortly after turning 14, he was deported from his home with his parents and younger sister to Auschwitz Extermination Camp. Of the four of them, he would be the only one to survive. After nearly dying from the brutality of his experience in the days following Allied liberation, he made his way to England, where astonishingly, in five short years, he was able to complete both his secondary and university educations, and become an electronics engineer. Learning that several of his elder siblings had somehow survived the Holocaust, he made his way to Venezuela in 1950, where two brothers and a sister had ultimately settled.
In those days, Venezuela was a very different place. Arriving with only the wealth of his hard-fought education, Max found himself in a country full of hope and potential. With that education and his own smarts and resourcefulness, Max founded several businesses that became important contributors to Venezuela’s history of development over the decades that followed, in areas as diverse as consumer electronics, car component manufacturing, air conditioning, and others. In 1959, Max married Vera Hollo of Los Angeles. The two of them raised two sons in Caracas, and were active in the social and charitable lives of their community. Max’s legacy of hard work and commitment continues to this day, with his son, Rafael, remaining at the helm of his father’s enterprises.
During his frail, later years, as Venezuela descended into calamity and became a dangerous place to live for the elderly, Max and Vera moved to Aventura, Florida where they enjoyed their well-earned retirement. Throughout their lives together, they recognized the importance of philanthropy, and became contributors to various community, social and educational causes. One of Max’s particular priorities was Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which he enthusiastically supported over the years.
Max was a listener, an accomplished ballroom dancer, an impish teller of jokes, a good-hearted, sensitive man who genuinely loved to help those in need around him. He was a very competent
mechanic, once reassembling an entire car by hand (an Opel Manta he loved to drive). He was an avid ham radio operator (call letters YV5BKW), a hobby which led to numerous friendships around the world. Max loved opera and classical music and attended performances whenever he could.
Survived by Vera, his wife of 58 years, his two sons, Rafael and David, his daughter-in-law, Amirah Deutsch (nee Guevara) and son-in-law, Gary Stutler, and grand-daughters, Natalia and Dara Deutsch. Also surviving him are his beloved older siblings, Gita Frisch (nee Deutsch), Andres Deutsch, and Farkas Deutsch, as well as equally loved nieces and nephew Cecilia Goldberger, Adriana Deutsch-Schumer, Denise Hollo, Sylvia Choe (nee Hollo), and David Alberto Deutsch, along with a legion of cousins, friends and acquaintances who will always remember him for the decent, gentle, incredibly special soul he was and always will be.
His family asks that donations in his memory be made to the National Parkinsons Foundation and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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