Drawing by Josef Nassy

Object | Accession Number: 1991.245.222

Classification: Art
Category: Drawings
Object Type: Drawing (lcsh)
Credit Line: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Severin Wunderman Family

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Physical Description: Image of buildings in camp
Dimensions: overall : 8.230 x 5.470 in. (20.904 x 13.894 cm.)
Materials: overall : wove paper, ink wash
Signature: lower left, "Nassy"
Contributor: Artist: Josef Nassy
Subject: Josef Nassy
Biography: 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.
Topical Term: Concentration camps--Germany--Pictorial works.
Concentration camp inmates as artists--Germany--Biography.
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in art--Pictorial works.
Prisoners of war in art--Germany--Pictorial works.
World War, 1939-1945--Art and the war--Pictorial works.
World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Pictorial works.
Personal Name: Nassy, Joseph Johan Cosmo, 1904-1976.
Corporate Name: Ilag VII (Concentration camp)--Pictorial works.
Legal Status: Permanent Collection
Provenance: The drawing was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1991 by the Severin Wunderman Family.
Conditions on Access: No restrictions on access
Conditions on Use: Unknown
: Record last modified: 2018-01-11 14:24:15
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn5494

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Pencil drawing by Josef Nassy of a man exercising in a prison camp yard

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Poster announcing Josef Nassy postwar exhibition

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Announcement of an exhibition of works by Nassy at LaPetite Galerie, Bruxelles, October 19-31, 1946. The exhibition was sponsored by the American UMCA.

The Josef Nassy papers include a letter thanking Nassy for art classes he taught at the Laufen internment camp, a travel permit allowing Nassy to cross the border into Austria and return, a program for Nassy’s October 1946 exhibition of internment camp artwork in Brussels, and Nassy’s 1953 employment card indicating his status as a foreign artist working in Belgium.

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Drawing by Josef Nassy

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