Coco Schumann, Jewish German Jazz Legend Forced To Play For Nazis, Dies
Coco Schumann in 2007. Image by Getty
By Ari Feldman January 30, 2018
Heinz Jakob “Coco” Schumann, a Jewish-German jazz legend who survived the Holocaust by playing for Nazis, is dead at 93, the BBC reported.
Schumann, born to Jewish parents, fell in love with jazz swing music while living in Berlin in the 1930s. His first girlfriend, who was French, gave him the nickname Coco because it was easier for her to pronounce than Jakob.
Schumann was arrested in 1943 and sent to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. There, Schumann was forced to play for Nazi officers in a band called the Ghetto Swingers.
“We played music in hell,” Schumann later said of the experience.
Schumann was later sent to Auschwitz, where he survived a death march forced on the camp’s prisoners ahead of the arrival of Allied soldiers.
Schumann later returned to Germany and became one of the country’s best known jazz musicians, and one of the first major German electric guitarists. His autobiography, “The Ghetto Swinger,” was eventually turned into a musical staged in Hamburg.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Fast Forward Brooklyn event with Itamar Ben-Gvir cancelled days before Israeli far-right minister’s US trip
-
Fast Forward Marco Rubio sits down with Michael Benz, Jewish former Trump official with an antisemitic online persona
-
Fast Forward Eyeing a new opportunity, Jewish settlers are positioning themselves on the Gaza border
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.