Biography
Doris Bloch (1928-2003) was the daughter of Richard and Ilse (Cats) Bloch. She was born on November 13, 1928 in Berlin, where her father and mother ran their own architectural firm. Doris had an older sister, Gerda (b. 1925). After being forced to close down their architectural business in December 1938, the Blochs decided to leave Germany. They purchased tickets to Shanghai, but went to relatives in Holland instead when an earlier opportunity presented itself in March 1939. At first the Blochs lived in the coastal town of Zandvoort, but moved the following month to Hulshorst in central Holland. There they lived in a simple wooden house in the woods owned by the Jurriaanse family. In July 1939 the Blochs moved yet again, this time to The Hague, where they remained through the first months of the German occupation. When the Nazi occupiers decreed in September 1940 that foreigners could no longer reside in coastal areas, the Blochs moved back to the house in Hulshorst. Doris and her sister were enrolled in public schools in nearby Nunspeet and Harderwijk until Jews were officially banned from the public school system in October 1941. From then on the girls attended a hastily organized Jewish school in Zwolle. In November 1942 after the deportations began, Doris and Gerda went into hiding with the Van Lohuizen family, who were leaders of the Dutch underground in the town of Epe in central Holland. Their parents went into hiding in Nunspeet a short time later. After living with the van Lohuizens for a time, Doris and Gerda were moved to other homes and hiding places in the area. Eventually Gerda went to live with the family of Reverend Adriaan and Ank Faber in Kampen, while Doris was taken to Geerlinkshof, a farm owned by Carl Johann and Helene Derksen in Lobith-Tolkamer in eastern Holland. For a time the Derksens also sheltered a young Dutchman who was in danger of being sent to Germany for forced labor and two downed Allied airmen. For the most part Doris lived openly under the assumed name of Dorothea Blokland, but her hosts prepared two hiding places in the event of a raid. One was a crawl space built behind a wall in their home, and the other was in the hayloft of the barn. Doris remained with the Derksens until the end of the war. At that time Doris learned that her parents had been deported to their death in Auschwitz in 1944 via Westerbork and Theresienstadt. Shortly after liberation Gerda found Doris and brought her back to Kampen to live with the Fabers, who became her legal guardians. Gerda then went to finish school in another city, before immigrating to the United States in 1947. Doris followed her two years later.
