Curt Bloch

Kurt Bloch (1908 – 1975)

Life Bloch was born in Dortmund. With Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Bloch fled to Amsterdam and found work with an importer and merchant of Persian carpets.

When the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Bloch was sent by the company that employed him to The Hague, but due to the restrictions imposed by the Germans on the employment of non-Dutch Jews, he was sent to Enschede, and found work in the local Jewish Council - an organization established by the Nazis to implement their decrees on the Jewish population. He was designated as a consultant for immigrant affairs, but soon the danger of deportation to a concentration camp loomed over him as well. He found refuge and shelter in the home of an undertaker named Bartos Menken and his wife Elida. The person who organized the hiding place for him was Leendert Overduin, a priest who founded a group that helped about a thousand Jews in that way.

Magazines While hiding in Enschede, Bloch began producing a weekly magazine, The Underwater Cabaret, using materials that Dutch allies brought to them alongside food and other necessities. Bloch published 95 issues, each of which included original art, poetry and songs that were mostly aimed at the Nazis and their collaborators among the Dutch.

The title “Onderwater-Cabaret” was inspired by the Dutch word “onderduiken” (go into hiding), which would literally translate into English as “to dive under”. Onderduiken used in Dutch is strongly associated with people hiding for German occupiers during WWII – mainly referring to Jews but also to members of the resistance and other persecuted population groups. contacted German designer and author Thilo von Debschitz. He developed the website curt-bloch.com with an international team and his agency Q. Supported by funds from German Rotary Clubs, private individuals, and foundations, the site offers extensive access to the magazines and poems of Curt Bloch. Thilo von Debschitz also reactivated a contact with the Jewish Museum Berlin dating back to 2014 between the museum and the Bloch family; subsequently, the family agreed to hand over the journals to the museum, which opened the exhibition "My verses are like dynamite – Curt Bloch’s Het Onderwater Cabaret" on February 8.