Eduard Bloch

Life & Legacy

Eduard Bloch (30 January 1872 – 1 June 1945) was an Austrian physician practicing in Linz. Born to a Jewish family of Czechoslovak origin, Bloch was the family doctor of Adolf Hitler and his family until 1907. Bloch oversaw the treatment of Hitler's mother, Klara, when she was dying of breast cancer, charging the family very little, to sometimes nothing, for her treatment.
Following the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Hitler described him as an Edeljude ('noble Jew'), and bestowed Gestapo protection on him in the midst of Kristallnacht and the escalation of anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany. Hitler allowed Bloch to emigrate to the United States, where he lived until his death in 1945, succumbing to stomach cancer.