CURT BLOCH’S HET ONDERWATER CABARET: A HIDDEN ACT OF CREATIVE RESISTANCE
Facilitating the Bloch Family's Donation of Anti-Nazi Magazines to the Jewish Museum Berlin
Image: [Left] An early issue of The Underwater Cabaret, the weekly magazine created by Curt Bloch in hiding from the Nazis in the Netherlands during World War II. [Right] A Photo of Curt Bloch, undated © Jewish Museum Berlin, Gift of Lide Schattenkerk
Unveiling a Family Treasure
A Legacy of Courage Through Creativity
Image: [Left] Bloch’s covers illustrate his efforts to track developments in the war. © Charities Aid Foundation America. [Right] An older woman in a hat selling baskets at a market.
Bloch’s title: “The Fuhrer’s Mother.” © Charities Aid Foundation America
Image: [Left] St. Nicholas in wartime. © Charities Aid Foundation America. [Right] Two men exiting the hatch of what appears to be a boat. The final issue: liberated and “above water.” © Charities Aid Foundation America
An Interview With Simone Bloch
Read an interview below with Curt Block’s daughter, Simone Bloch:
How did Curt Bloch’s ability to create art under extreme circumstances demonstrate the role of creativity in maintaining hope and humanity during times of oppression?
My father Curt was an A+ student of history and poetry, and – like many classically educated Germans of his time – had volumes of verse etched in his mind. He also had a deep knowledge of how cycles of tyranny and resistance had played out over previous millennia, starting with the death of Socrates, who was sentenced to commit suicide for corrupting the minds of Athenians with ideas about democracy and freedom. My father knew the value of his own mind. He had been taught this in the very system that now wished him dead. Every feat of the imagination is a threat to the unlimited and absolute power of dictatorship. “On the Grand Piano of My Imagination” describes how he composes in his imagination, which can’t be governed or destroyed. He conveys a deep, resolute reluctance to accept the present reality, much like how Black spirituals affirm the dignity and humanity of their singers, even in the face of dehumanizing conditions.
How do you think the predominantly Middle Eastern students at Curt Bloch’s former high school connect with his themes of resistance, hope, and liberation, and what lessons from The Underwater Cabaret do you feel are most relevant to their challenges and aspirations today?
My father’s education at this very same institution that they [the students] are now attending empowered him to create something enduring and cool. The students (and some of their parents who attended the evening as well), were eager to connect with me as a person who understands how displacement and threat to one’s survival can produce an enduring identity with one’s past even as one grows up as a stranger in a strange land. The audience was Syrian, Turkish, Lebanese, Brazilian and Kurdish, Ukrainian and Mexican. It felt – for me – like home (much the same population of present day Queens [in New York City], where I grew up when it was all Irish, Italian, and Jewish).
In what ways does Bloch’s creative resistance during the Holocaust inspire conversations about addressing oppression and injustice in the modern world?
On some level, the fact that I am an American/German Jew with no affiliation with present day Israel embodied the audience’s experience of displacement. My family made a life in a new place where they had to learn a new language and adjust to a lack of status and common community.
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