Overview
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Severin Wunderman Family
- Signature
- unsigned
Physical Details
- Classification
-
Art
- Category
-
Drawings
- Object Type
-
Drawing (lcsh)
- Physical Description
- depiction of a man reclining on a bunk bed reading.
ink and ink wash on wove paper - Dimensions
- overall: Height: 7.520 inches (19.101 cm) | Width: 9.760 inches (24.79 cm)
- Materials
- overall : wove paper, ink
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Material(s) in this collection may be protected by copyright and/or related rights. You do not require further permission from the Museum to use this material. The user is solely responsible for making a determination as to if and how the material may be used.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The drawing was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1992 by the Severin Wunderman family.
- Record last modified:
- 2025-01-02 11:19:12
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn6121
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Drawing of nuns gathered around an inmate playing piano by Josef Nassy
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Drawing by professionally trained artist Josef Nassy, a black expatriate of Jewish descent. Josef was one of about 2,000 civilians holding American passports who were confined in German internment camps during World War II (19391945). From 19291934, he was employed in the installation of sound systems in Europe for a film company. Before leaving, Josef had obtained an American passport under the name Josef Nassy, he thought it would be safer to hold an American passport while in Europe. Though he’d been born in Suriname (formerly Dutch Guiana), he apparently claimed that he was born in San Francisco in 1899. He was able to do this because San Francisco's public records had been destroyed in the earthquake of 1906, and authorities issued the passport without any investigation. In 1938, he attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium, to study painting. German forces occupied Belgium in May 1940, but Josef and his Belgian wife did not leave. Four months after the US entered the war in December 1941, Josef was arrested as an enemy alien in Germanoccupied Belgium because he held an American passport. He was held in the Beverloo transit camp in Leopoldsburg for seven months. He was then deported to Laufen internment camp and its subcamp, Tittmoning in Germany. Throughout his threeyear imprisonment, Josef created a unique visual diary of more than 200 paintings and drawings. Many of these works chronicle people and daily life in the internment camps. The US Third Army liberated Laufen on May 5, 1945. Josef and nearly all the internees at the camps survived the war. A year after liberation, Josef was repatriated to Belgium. He eventually returned to the United States, and continued to create works of art.
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