September 25, 1943
Introduction to the content
The Mussoleum portrays Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill’s frustration that Mussolini has escaped from captivity. They hoped to could display him as a trophy in a specially constructed cage – a “Mussoleum.” Unfortunately because of his escape, they must postpone promoting this attraction.
In Inveterate Bloch sadly considers the haunting words of a German war widow whose proud testament he still remembers: she’s glad her son died as he wanted to, like his father, buried on French soil. Curt sees the Germans succumbing yet again to the seduction of violent nationalism – the German character is vulnerable to an incurable madness inherent to their spirit, one that cannot be eradicated.
In the poem A shortening of the front Bloch joyfully reports on the German retreat in the face of the relentless advance of Russian troops from the East. The swastika fantasy has gone up in smoke. Joseph Stalin is awaiting support from the allies but, “even if England does not do too much,” Adolf “Hitler will receive the knockout blow from Stalin in the East.”
In Soap bubbles, Bloch critiques Joseph Goebbels’ slogans which exhort the Germans to stand strong – as a lot of hot air which inflates an enormous soap bubble that will burst with a bang one day soon. The Reich Minister of Propaganda is trying desperately to spread confidence among the German people. However, with time, it’s inevitable that all these illusions will go bust.
A Little Person In Hiding Asks is written in the voice of a child asking innocent unanswerable questions of its mother. The questions themselves summarize simply the senselessness and injustice of the persecution. Why am I not allowed to play outside? Why did they rob our house? Why are they commanded to hate us? The questions remain unanswered; however, ending with the hope that a day of freedom will soon dawn. [You can listen to this poem in the Dutch original – read by Ruth Bloch, the 98-year-old widow of Curt Bloch, at home in New York in November 2023.]
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Curt Bloch responds in The People Are Onto Them to a speech by Max Blokzijl the Secretary of Press Affairs for the NSB. Bloch’s detailed indictment of the Dutch National Socialists includes accusations of thievery in addition to unimaginable violent crimes committed against their own citizens. The NSB, a party of rogues who have sold themselves to the Germans, will soon be stripped of power, and “the filth will be burned.” In fact, at the end of the war, Blokzijl became the first Dutch collaborator to be executed in 1946.
