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
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
