Judith Deutsch-Haspel was born in Vienna. She joined the Jewish ahtlectic club of Hakoah Vienna, because as a Jewess she was denied membership by most other sports clubs in Austria. Competing for Hakoah, Judith Deutsch became Austrian swimming champion and freestyle record holder, from 1933 to 1935. The Austrian Sports Authority designated her as the Outstanding Austrian Female Athlete of 1935. A year later she was awarded the Golden Badge of Honor, having been recognized as one of the three most outstanding athlets in Austria. Judith Deutsch was selected to the Austrian National team for the Olympic Games of Berlin in 1936, but she refused to participate in protest to the anti-Semitic politicy of Nazi Germany.
She immigrated to Palestine the same year settling in Haifa, at the time the only city with an Olympic sized swimming pool in the country. She continued her career becoming a national champion and winning a silver medal at the World University Games in 1939, when she was a member of the University of Jerusalem team.
Following her emigration, the Austrian authorities stripped her of all her titles. They were returned to her, along with official appologies from the Austrian Parliament, only in 1995, at a ceremony held in Israel in the presence of the Austrian ambassador. Judith Deutsch-Haspel’s story has been inserted in Hakoach lishot (“Watermarks”), a 2004 documentary movie by the Israeli director Yaron Zilberman about the women swimmers of the Hakoah Vienna sports club.