Marika Krpez's father Lazar Deutsch with friends

The picture was taken at the beginning of the 1920's in Subotica. I know that the people in the picture are my father's friends and that they are all Jews. I do not know what the occasion for the picture was. My father, Lazar Deutsch, is seated second from the right. Next to him, in the center, is his good friend Stevan Srajber, about whom I only know that he survived the war. My father Lazar unfortunately did not come back from the war. During the war he was sent from one work camp to another. I know he wasa moved 15 times. At the end of 1944 he was sent to Mauthausen where he died from typhoid. His friends told me that he was a good man and that he was already, even to his own detriment, to help others. He went to work in a big wholesale store as an apprentice. He worked there until 1937 when he married. My mother, Jelena, sold a small parcel of land that she and her sister had received from the state, and my father used this money to start his own business. He sold buttons, threads and other items to tailors in neighboring villages. My mother used to tell me about how he was such a good man and how he used to give people the goods on credit. When he came to collect the money, the debtors would prepare a chicken soup and ask him to be patient, and they would certainly pay him back the next time he came to collect. Because of this laxity, he was always on the verge of bankruptcy.