Bloch, David Ludwig

Born hearing in Floss, Bavaria, but orphaned and deafened in his first year. Attended deaf schools in Munich and Jena, then the Technical School of Porcelain Industry in Selb, then apprenticed to a porcelain director. Rising Nazi anti-Semitism led to his being expelled from the State Academy of Applied Arts, then imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. He remained in Dachau until an American cousin bought him passage to Shanghai, China, in 1940. He lived there 9 years, some of them under Japanese occupation, before emigration to the U.S. and working as a lithographic artist for 26 years. While in China, he met and married a deaf Chinese woman, bringing her with him to America. A 1976 return visit to Dachau inspired Bloch to begin the series of Holocaust-themed woodcuts and paintings that he is now best known for. Died at Barrytown, NY.