Anybody who ventured down the Ghent shopping street Veldstraat until the late noughties will have marvelled at the window of Bloch’s Jewish bakery. Sadly, the well-known Ghent pastry chef Jacques Bloch died earlier this month. He was 96. Until 2008 Bloch ran the bakery whose reputation was known far beyond the city of Ghent. He was also one of the most important figures in the city’s Jewish community and remained concerned about the situation in Israel and Palestine until the end of his life.
Owner of Bloch’s bakery and stalwart of the Ghent Jewish community Jacques Bloch dies
Colin Clapson
Published:
It was in 1958 that Jacques Bloch became the new owner of the famous pastry shop in Ghent Veldstraat. It was the Franco-German couple Benjamin Bloch and Sophie Loeb who opened the bakery in Ghent in 1899. Even though the shop closed in 2008, the bakery’s reputation stayed alive and Bloch remained a household name in Ghent. In 2020, a new Bloch bakery opened in the Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat, albeit with different owners.
It wasn’t only the thriving bakery that made Jacques Bloch a familiar figure in Ghent, he also stood up for the Jewish community in his city. ‘Actually, he was not a very religious man, but he defended the local Jewish community mainly out of a sense of responsibility for his community,’ says Karel van Keymeulen, who in 2019 published a book on the life of the Bloch family together with Tina De Gendt.
In the 1990s, Ghent’s Jewish community and Bloch were able to secure the creation of a memorial to rabbi Michael Lustig on Lindenlei: the Monument Michael Lustig was named after the Ghent rabbi who, together with 66 other Ghent Jews, was deported during the Second World War. The memorial stands as a symbol for all deportees and victims of fascism.
Flight to America
Jacques Bloch too was affected by the war. ‘When Nazism reared its head in the 1930s, Jacques' father in particular became very aware of what was happening to the Jews in Germany. Refugees also sometimes came to visit the Bloch family in Ghent.’
‘Eventually he fled with his family to the United States. Some relatives remained in Belgium. Some died at the hands of the Germans. The war clearly left a heavy mark on him and his family.’
When Jacques Bloch returned to Belgium, his main focus was the bakery. ‘Only when the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and other countries in 1967 did he become more aware of his roots. From then on, he really dedicated himself to that community.’
‘In recent years he had been less active in community life, but the situation in the Middle East focussed his mind. I would still visit him occasionally and he would be watching BBC News to follow what was happening in the region. He was really engaged with what was unfolding. It really took hold of him’ says Karel van Keymeulen.