This Jazz Artist Was Included in the Holocaust Memorial Museum

Freddy Johnson, a jazz pianist who was interned in Tittmoning from January 1942 until February 1944, plays the piano. In the background a drawing of a man playing the piano by artist Josef Nassy, who also was interned in Tittmoning. [United States Holocaust Museum Memorial]

Weary of racism in his home country, American jazz musician Freddy Johnson made Europe his home base after touring there in the late 1920s. Black musicians were popular, and Freddy, a gifted piano player, became a fixture at clubs in the Netherlands.

Freddy, his wife, and daughters lived in Europe for about a decade before the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940. Soon they witnessed anti-Jewish violence. Freddy’s wife, Ida, later told an American official that she saw Jews being beaten on the streets of the Hague outside a synagogue near their home.

Freddy and his family were initially safe in the German-occupied Netherlands even though Nazi racist ideology judged Black people as racially inferior. The Nazis considered jazz a “degenerate” art form. Despite their efforts to disparage it and promote other types of music, jazz remained popular. German officers even frequented the club where Freddy performed.

But after the United States entered World War II in December 1941, life grew dangerous for Freddy and other Americans who remained in Europe and were considered enemies. Freddy was imprisoned at the Tittmoning POW camp in Germany for more than two years. His wife and daughters were later interned at other camps—among hundreds of Americans living in Europe who were imprisoned.

Though Ida reported that she and her daughters were treated relatively well, they witnessed Nazi violence against the Dutch prisoners, including Dutch Jews. German guards kicked an older man to death and bashed another man’s face with a brick.

In February 1944, Freddy was released from the camp in a prisoner exchange.

After returning to the States, joined Garvin Bushell's band in New York in 1944. In the later 40s and early 50s he worked mostly as a piano and voice coach, and also did some solo residencies at Well's New York. He returned to Europe in 1959 with the "Free and Easy" show, and then played for another three weeks in the Netherlands.

Soon after he became ill with cancer, and after staying at a hospital in Copenhagen in autumn 1960, he returned to New York and stayed in St. Barnabas Hospital until his death in March of 1961.

Video: Black Artists Under Nazi Persecution
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxLhC2OsHcU

Sources: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; Who's Who of Jazz - Storyville to Swingstreet, by John Chilton, Chilton Book Company