Testimony of Het OWC

It's a story from the New York Times, a story just out this morning. You can read all of it right here. At its heart is a German Jew from Holland, who created a magazine while hiding in the crawl space of the home of a Dutch undertaker during WWII, this magazine, Het Onderwater Cabaret (OWC). The word onderwater (under water) is a derivative of a designation given to those men (usually) who, rather than serve the cause of the German war machine, chose to hide--to be hidden--somewhere out of the view of the Gestapo, those who "dived under." 

In Wiltz, Luxembourg, American forces swept out the German occupiers, the village grew exponentially because so many of its own men were "under water," hiding under cover. They were in town, but not there to anyone who didn't know.

For the war years, Kurt Bloch--who had already fled Germany during the 30s to try to find safe haven in the Netherlands--was onderwater, living as he did "under water." With what scraps of magazines and newspapers the underground could get to him, he'd slice and dice until he could create a little monthly magazine for friends and accomplices, The Underwater Cabaret, he called it, like the one above, featuring "Santa Claus at war"--ho, ho, ho with a sword. Or this one. 

Bloch's magazine was only a few pages thick, often featuring his own little poems. 

Who read it? Anybody's guess, I suppose, but it's hard to imagine he could have had a wider readership than dozen or so, most of them, probably hidden-away Jews or onderdykkers. Not a ton of circulation, but immense creativity under the constant pressure and dangers from the war all around. 

Bloch's devotion to his little hidden away magazine, like the diaries of Anne Frank or Etty Hillesum, or the war time saga of Berendina Eman, are the kind of stories that need to be rebreathed, need to be read and told again and again. They offer all of us mighty examples of human courage and selflessness amid life-threatening dangers. These magazines--a granddaughter of Mr. Bloch unearthed them--are a testament to heroism, to conviction, to the human spirit rightly driven. 

Percentage-wise, the Netherlands lost a higher percentage of their Jewish population during World War II than any other occupied country--100 thousand of the 140. The two population groups most involved in Resistance work during the war in Holland were the Marxists first, and then the Orthodox Protestants. In Bloch's case, the center point of the Resistance group who tended to his needs was led by a Dutch Reformed preacher named Leendert Overduin.

About Overduin I need to know more. . .