After Years Out of Sight in an UWS Apartment, a Collection of Hidden Holocaust Art is in the International Spotlight

By Margie Smith Holt

For two years during World War II, Curt Bloch lived in a cramped attic in the Netherlands, hiding from the Nazis. A German Jew, he passed the time creating a small satirical magazine of art and poems that ridiculed Hitler, denounced Nazi propaganda, and documented his life underground. “Het Onderwater-Cabaret” he called it. “The Underwater Cabaret.”

When he was liberated, so was the work – all 95 artfully produced and preserved issues, one for every week Bloch spent in hiding between August 1943 and April 1945. When he emigrated to New York in 1948, the fragile editions came too – first to Queens, where they remained for some 40 years, then, eventually, to the Upper West Side, where for two decades more, they stood on a bookshelf in a brownstone on West 92nd Street.

Sitting in front of that bookshelf, Bloch’s widow, Ruth, a 100-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, and daughter, Simone, explained that for years, they believed no one outside of the family would care about Curt Bloch’s underground literary project.

“You thought that no one was interested,” Simone said to her mother during a conversation with West Side Rag. “And yeah, I think at the time, no one was. Because at the time, when my father was alive, most of the people who were still in Germany were Nazis. Had been Nazis.”

Ruth agreed, noting that, “After the war, you never knew who this guy is, or this woman is” or what they had done during the war. “I wouldn’t shake any German’s hand because I thought…maybe they were the ones that killed my parents. Who knows?” said Ruth.

“When I was a kid,” said Simone, “people who had been in concentration camps – we called them victims. The word ‘survivor’ is a relatively new thing. History has changed. History has been made since my father died [in 1975] that made it possible for this to have a place.”

That place is the Jewish Museum Berlin, where Bloch’s extraordinary work received its first exhibition and is now part of the permanent collection, “a dream come true” for the family. A second exhibition is planned for the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam later this year (December 17, 2026–May 9, 2027). And while no full-scale showing of the original artwork is scheduled in the U.S (not yet, anyway; Simone’s working on that), Bloch’s story returns to the Upper West Side this week. On Thursday, January 22, large-scale reproductions of the work will be on display in an all-day exhibit honoring his work at Congregation Rodeph Sholom on West 83rd Street.

“It’s a wonderful thing,” said Ruth Bloch. “It’s important because people don’t really know what was going on in the underground. People know people went to concentration camps, but they didn’t know what happened to those that were lucky and were underground.”

The Underwater Cabaret’s path out of obscurity began in 2011 when Bloch’s granddaughter, Lucy – Simone’s daughter – began researching the work as a college student. Then Simone took up the mantle, collaborating with German author and designer Thilo von Debschitz to create a digital archive, publicize the magazine, and start getting Bloch the attention he deserved.

“I call myself my father’s stage mother. Or, you know, Swifty Lazar with one client: my father,” said Simone. “My elevator pitch for him is that he was like Tupac Shakur and Anne Frank with delusions of Stephen Colbert or John Oliver…actually, John Oliver, because [“The Underwater Cabaret” appeared] once a week.”

Bloch’s wife and daughter believe his work’s message of creative resistance is especially relevant today.

The magazine “tells a lot of what happened,” said Ruth. “How the Germans bought into this fanaticism.”

“I hope it inspires people to ask questions about themselves, and how they think about humanity, and about what’s going on in this world right now, when people are being grabbed off the streets and killed in broad daylight,” said Simone. “I’m trying to figure out…who are the allies? Who are the allies who are going to help liberate us?”

Simone Bloch is the only surviving child of parents who were both the lone survivors of their respective families. She was a teenager when her father died in 1975. Finding a home for his remarkable collection and promoting his legacy has given her a second chance to get to know him.

 “Were you really into hearing what your parents had to say when you were 14?” she asked. “I wish we had had an easier relationship. It was the ’70s. He was an old German man, and I was a young American woman. I think we would have made amends, had he not died.”

“Like all kids, you know,” Ruth laughed. “They have problems with their parents.”

Said Simone: “I wish he could have known how proud I wound up being of him.”

 Hidden Art of the Holocaust: Curt Bloch’s “Onderwater-Cabaret” will be on exhibit Thursday, January 22 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, 7 West 83rd Street. Simone Bloch and Thilo von Debschitz will speak at noon and 7 p.m. Register to attend the exhibit — HERE.

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