October 27, 2026, it became known about the appearance of the Ukrainian translation of the book “Lea Deutsch. Child of Theater, Music, and Dance“. It was prepared by Natalia Bakulina — Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, a lecturer at the International Humanitarian-Pedagogical Institute “Beit-Hana” in Dnipro. The event was reported by the institute itself, publishing photos of the edition.
Author: Lev Varshavsky
The author of the book is German historian of Croatian origin Martina Bitunjac, a researcher of European Jewry and Holocaust history. Her work was first published in German in 2019, and in 2021 it was translated into Croatian. Now the biography of the girl, who was called the “Croatian Shirley Temple” in pre-war Zagreb, has also received a Ukrainian version.
The story of Lea Deutsch is little known outside Croatia, although her life and death are connected with one of the most tragic pages of European Jewry.
Lea Deutsch: the girl applauded by Zagreb and destroyed by the Holocaust
Lea Dragica Deutsch was born in 1927 in Zagreb, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Her father Stepan was a lawyer, and her mother Ivka came from the Singer family. Lea had a younger brother Sasha.
At the age of five, the girl first appeared on the stage of the Croatian National Theater. Soon she became one of the most recognizable young actresses in the city. Lea performed in plays based on works by Molière, Shakespeare, Erich Kästner, sang, danced, and performed in operettas.
Newspapers wrote about her extraordinary talent, and audiences came specifically to see the little artist. During her nine-year theatrical career, she managed to play many roles, including boys, princes, and little aristocrats.
Everything changed in April 1941, when after the defeat of Yugoslavia, the Independent State of Croatia was established, governed by the fascist Ustaše movement, an ally of Nazi Germany.
Jews were deprived of civil rights, expelled from educational institutions, dismissed from work, subjected to arrests and deportations. Lea could no longer perform in the theater. Her family lost their previous home. Attempts by relatives and representatives of the cultural community to protect the girl did not help.
In May 1943, Lea, her mother, and brother were deported towards Auschwitz. According to the Croatian Encyclopedia and the Jewish Biographical Dictionary of Croatia, the sixteen-year-old actress died during transportation in an overcrowded railway car. The exact circumstances of her death have not been fully documented.
Her mother and brother also perished in the Holocaust. Her father survived the war by hiding in a Zagreb hospital.
Martina Bitunjac: the research that restored Lea Deutsch’s name
Historian Martina Bitunjac works at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies in Potsdam. Her research focuses on the history of Southeastern Europe, Jewish communities, and the participation of women in the Ustaše movement.
In 2019, the German publisher Hentrich & Hentrich released her 70-page biography of Lea Deutsch in the series Jüdische Miniaturen. The work is based on historical documents, photographs, theatrical press, and archival research, including materials collected in Croatia and Israel.
Bitunjac did not limit herself to describing the young actress’s death. She reconstructed her short creative career, family environment, and the circumstances of Jewish persecution in Zagreb.
In 2023, together with Croatian historian Damir Agičić, she prepared the exhibition “Between Fame and Oblivion. Lea Deutsch — Prodigy and Holocaust Victim.” The exhibition showcased theatrical photographs, pre-war press publications, and documents from the time of the fascist regime.
In 2011, a Croatian feature film “Lea and Darija” was also dedicated to the actress’s fate.
Natalia Bakulina, “Beit-Hana,” and the Ukrainian-Israeli connection
The translator of the Ukrainian edition Natalia Valeryevna Bakulina is a researcher with many years of experience in the field of Jewish education. In 2012, she defended her candidate dissertation on the methodology of teaching Hebrew in Ukrainian schools.
Bakulina worked at the Institute of Pedagogy of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine, participated in the creation of textbooks and educational-methodical materials on Hebrew. In the academic electronic archive, 151 publications are registered in her name, including co-authored works.
The “Beit-Hana” Institute, with which she collaborates, has been operating in Dnipro since 1995. It began as a Jewish women’s pedagogical college, training teachers for national schools and kindergartens. Today it is a registered private higher educational institution, combining pedagogical training with the study of Jewish culture and traditions.
For the Israeli reader, this story has another dimension. Holocaust research has long united archives and specialists from different countries, and preserving the names of the deceased remains one of the main tasks of the Jerusalem memorial “Yad Vashem.”
In the “Jews from Ukraine” section, the publication Nikk.Agency Israel News previously told about Mordechai Shenhavi, a native of Volochysk, who was at the origins of “Yad Vashem”. Another of our publications was dedicated to Sonya Delaunay, an artist with Odessa Jewish roots who survived the Holocaust years in France.
Lea Deutsch was not a native of Ukraine. But the Ukrainian translation of her biography makes the history of the destroyed Jewish world of the Balkans accessible to a new audience. This is especially significant for a country where the memory of the Holocaust is connected not only with Babi Yar but also with hundreds of cities and towns where Jewish communities existed.
So far, the “Beit-Hana” institute has not announced in the published notice the exact print run, the publisher of the Ukrainian version, and the conditions of its distribution. The main thing is known: Martina Bitunjac’s research now exists in Ukrainian thanks to the work of Natalia Bakulina.