As the daughter of antiques dealers, Simone Bloch grew up in a New York house filled with rare and mysterious materials. The dining room was packed with precious volumes, including a collection of small, hand-written magazines, illustrated with collages in a dadaist or surrealist style. “All of my parents’ books were kind of intimidating,” Simone, now 64, says. “But this was weirder. It wasn’t something I would ever want to pick up.” She found them a little creepy, with their frequent images of Adolf Hitler and other wartime leaders. It was only many years later that Simone came to understand...