Ernst Bloch

Ernst Bloch was born on 10 July 1889 in Libochowitz, Bohemia (now Libochovice, Czech Republic). A tradesman and later sales representative, he married Margarete Revy from Berlin. They had a daughter named Margot, who was born in 1923. The Bloch family lived in the same house as Margarete’s parents, at Innsbrucker Straße 7 in the Berlin district of Schöneberg. In March 1941 they were forced to move out, and went to live as subtenants of Olga and Josef Weinreich, Margarete Bloch’s aunt and her husband, at Martin Luther Straße 95.
From the early 1940s on, Ernst Bloch was forced to perform labour, working a punch, for the Weber firm in Kreuzberg – for 85 pfennigs per hour. His rent alone cost 70 Reich marks. At the same time, his daughter Margot performed forced labour at Flohr engineering works in Tegel.
One evening in November 1942, Ernst Bloch returned home from the doctor’s, and Margot from forced labour at Flohr engineering works in Tegel, to find their apartment sealed off and Margarete Bloch gone.
Ernst Bloch and his daughter turned to the works manager at Flohr, Herbert Patzsche, who had previously offered to help Margot. Patzsche and his wife Erika, who lived in Tegel, let them stay in their home. A few days later, Ernst Bloch reported to the Gestapo in a desperate bid to get his wife released. Instead, he was arrested and sent to the assembly camp at Große Hamburger Straße 26, where his wife was also being held. They were both deported on 29 November 1942, along with Margarete’s aunt Olga Weinreich, on the 23rd transport to Auschwitz. They did not survive.
Margot Bloch stayed with the Patzschkes until 21 December 1942. Then she asked a Jewish acquaintance in Hanover for help, who took Margot in, despite the risk to her own safety. In spring 1943, Margot found a new place to stay in the home of Gertrud Kochanowski, a convinced Social Democrat whose husband had been conscripted to the army. A business woman, Gertrud Kochanowski provided for Margot, who as an “illegal” person in hiding had no access to food ration cards.
In October 1943, Gertrud Kochanowski’s apartment in Hanover was destroyed by bombing during an air raid and she was allocated emergency housing in Osterode in the Harz region. She took Margot Bloch with her, claiming she was a “soldier’s wife” named Margot Fischer. When Margot’s presence became too conspicuous in the small provincial town, Gertrud Kochanowski asked a friend in Hanover, Albert Heuer, for help. In the last months of the war, he and his wife Dora, both Social Democrats, took 19-year old Margot in, although they had four children of their own. Margot Bloch survived to see Hanover’s liberation by the Allies on 10 April 1945. In 1946 she moved to England, where she married Max Arnsdorf. She and her husband then moved to Australia, where they took on the name Arnott. Margot Arnott died in Melbourne in September 2015.
On her initiative, in the 1970s, Gertrud Kochanowski, Albert and Dora Heuer, and Herbert and Erika Patzschke were recognized as “Righteous among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem memorial site in Israel. Dora Heuer and Gertrud Kochanowski were also awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for their humanitarian efforts.
On 5 November 2010, a street in Hemmingen near Hanover was renamed “Dorle-und-Albert-Heuer-Weg” in commemoration of Dora (known as Dorle) and Albert Heuer. At the same time, a memorial plaque in commemoration of the Heuers and Gertrud Kochanowski was unveiled outside the town hall.