11 Facts About Coco Schumann

Heinz Jakob "Coco" Schumann was a German jazz musician and Holocaust survivor.

Coco Schumann became a member of the Ghetto Swingers while transported to Theresienstadt at the age of nineteen.

Coco Schumann was born in Berlin, Germany, into a bourgeois family.

Coco Schumann's mother, Hedwig, was a hairdresser who worked at her father's salon.

Coco Schumann became passionate about Swing jazz after having heard it during the Berlin Olympics.

Coco Schumann was transported first to Theresienstadt at the age of nineteen, where he became a member of the Ghetto Swingers.

Coco Schumann played with Marlene Dietrich, Ella Fitzgerald, and Helmut Zacharias, among others, before founding his own Coco Schumann Quartet.

Coco Schumann's eventful and colorful life is a subject of and is celebrated in a German-language true-to-life color graphic novel by Caroline Gille and Niels Schroder.

In reflection to his years in a concentration camp, Schumman recalled: "I am a musician who was imprisoned in concentration camps," Coco Schumann said in later years, adding: "Not a concentration camp prisoner who plays music".

Coco Schumann, who had been filmed in Theresienstadt in 1944 as part of a German documentary, Theresienstadt, was featured in a 2013 documentary called Refuge in Music, about the life of Jewish musicians, composers and artists under the Third Reich.

Coco Schumann died in Berlin on 28 January 2018 at the age of 93.