Drawing of Freddy Johnson by Josef Nassy
Extent and Medium
overall: Height: 8.460 inches (21.488 cm) | Width: 10.980 inches (27.889 cm)
Creator(s)
- Josef Nassy (Subject)
- Josef Nassy (Artist)
Biographical History
Josef Nassy was born in 1904 in Paramaribo, Suriname (the Dutch Guiana.) He was the seventh of nine children. His father Adolf was a prosperous businessman and member of Parliament. He was a descendant of Jews who fled Spain during the Inquisition, and spoke Yiddish, but was not religious. Josef was also of African descent. In 1919, Josef joined his father, in New York. He had taken art classes since a child, and now attended the Pratt Institute. He received a degree in industrial electrical engineering and worked in London and Paris installing movie theatre sound systems. In 1938, he attended the Academie des Beaux Arts in Brussels, Belgium, to study painting. Nassy was earning a living as a portrait artist when World War II began. In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Belgium. Josef was arrested in April 1942 as an enemy national, as he had an American passport. Nassy was held in Beverloo transit camp in Leopoldsburg, Belgium, before being transferred to Laufen internment camp and its subcamp Tittmoning. While imprisoned, Nassy was supplied with art materials by the International YMCA. He created more than 200 paintings and drawings chronicling the people and the appearance of the camp, with works featuring the barbed wire, watch towers, and prison bars. The United States Army liberated Laufen internment camp on May 5, 1945. Nassy passed away in 1976.
Archival History
The drawing was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1991 by the Severin Wunderman Family.
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Severin Wunderman Family
Scope and Content
The drawing was created by Josef Nassy and depicts Freddy Johnson, an African-American jazz musician, playing piano while both men were held in Tittmoning internment camp in Germany, between 1942 and 1944.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Image of a man, Freddy Johnson, playing piano with another man observing at right.
People
- Nassy, Joseph Johan Cosmo, 1904-1976.
Corporate Bodies
- Ilag VII (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in art--Pictorial works.
- Concentration camps--Germany--Pictorial works.
- Concentration camp inmates as artists--Germany--Biography.
- World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Pictorial works.
- World War, 1939-1945--Art and the war--Pictorial works.
- Prisoners of war in art--Germany--Pictorial works.
Genre
- Object
- Art