David Ludwig Bloch

David Ludwig Bloch (March 25, 1910 – September 16, 2002) was a German-Jewish American lithographer and painter.

During Kristallnacht, Bloch was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp for four weeks. Despite the fact that he was deaf, he was released from the camp and was able to escape to Shanghai in 1940. After immigrating to the United States in 1949, his artwork focused on the horrors of the Holocaust.

Early life and education David Ludwig Bloch was born March 25, 1910, in Floss, Bavaria, where his middle-class family had lived for many generations. His parents, Simon and Selma Ansbacher Bloch, both died before Bloch had turned two years old. He was raised by his grandmother, with the help of a nanny.

Bloch was deafened by meningitis when he was one year old. After his release, he found work with the master painter Heinz Voges in Munich.

His first solo exhibit was in Shanghai in 1941. His work was displayed in the exhibit Flight and Rescue in Shanghai, 1938–1949, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2000. In 2000, a one-man retrospective of his work was held at the Jewish Museum Munich commemorating his 90th birthday.

Honors He received the Kulturpreis from the German Federation of the Deaf in 1997. The David-Ludwig Bloch School in Essen, Germany, is a deaf school named after Bloch.

Death Bloch died September 16, 2002, in Barrytown, New York.