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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Charlie English

‘Satirical resistance’: the magazine-maker who risked his life poking fun at the Nazis

War of words … an issue of Curt Bloch’s satirical magazine The Underwater Cabinet.
War of words … an issue of Curt Bloch’s satirical magazine The Underwater Cabinet. Photograph: Stiftung Jüdisches Museum Berlin/Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Blochʼs family

As the daughter of antiques dealers, Simone Bloch grew up in a New York house filled with rare and mysterious materials. The dining room was packed with precious volumes, including a collection of small, hand-written magazines, illustrated with collages in a dadaist or surrealist style.

“All of my parents’ books were kind of intimidating,” Simone, now 64, says. “But this was weirder. It wasn’t something I would ever want to pick up.” She found them a little creepy, with their frequent images of Adolf Hitler and other wartime leaders. It was only many years later that Simone came to understand that these magazines represented her father’s resistance to the Holocaust.

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