By Coco Schumann

With Max Christian Graeff and Michaela Haas
Translated by John Howard
Afterword by Michael H. Kater

2018. 192 pages with 55 illustrations and an index.
Ebook also available.
$24.95 | 9780983254041 (hardcover, 2016)
$16.95 | 9780998777061 (paperback, 2018)

The heartening memoir of a Jewish guitarist who survived concentration camps through his music, arrived back to a destroyed Berlin and helped remake the jazz and swing culture of his city.

“Germany’s most famous swing guitarist.”
– Deutsche Welle International Broadcast Network

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ARSC 2017 AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN HISTORICAL RECORDED SOUND RESEARCH,
JAZZ CATEGORY

Coco Schumann’s career as a jazz and swing musician spans more than seventy years and is replete with honors. But for decades Schumann bore his wartime experiences as a Holocaust survivor in silence, with only the pleasure of composing music and performing for live audiences to ease the burden of his most haunting memories. In his memoir, Schumann recounts the vibrant underground club scenes of Berlin in the years surrounding World War II as well as providing backstage glimpses into Berlin’s famous nightlife, where he shared the stage with such jazz notables as Helmut Zacharias, Tullio Mobiglia, Toots Thielemans, and American visitors like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald. At the same time, The Ghetto Swinger offers Schumann’s harrowing testimony from 1943–1945 about daily life inside Theresienstadt (Terezín) and Auschwitz, and provides readers with the important perspective of a Jewish Holocaust survivor who remained in Germany after the war.

In his home country, Schumann is a celebrated personality. But until now, his life story hasn’t been accessible to English-speaking audiences. Featuring rare photographs and an Afterword by Weimar- and Nazi-era culture scholar Michael H. Kater, The Ghetto Swinger is an engrossing historical document as much as it is a heartwarming memoir.

PRAISE

Considered the first ever jazz electric guitarist in Germany, [Coco Schumann] played swing for years but was versatile enough to perform in much more commercial settings during the lean periods. He kept his memories of the prison camps mostly to himself for four decades. The Ghetto Swinger has Coco Schumann telling his story honestly, colorfully and with occasional humor. It is a fascinating [book] that is well worth discovering. Read more…
– Scott Yanow, L.A. Jazz Scene, March 1, 2017

Interview with Coco Schumann by Hanz Eck 
Die Zeit, October 29, 2015. Translated from the German and viewable in the original.

The Ghetto Swinger: The Incredible Story of Jazz Star Coco Schumann Who Played in Auschwitz For His Life by Michaela Haas
Huffington Post, January 12, 2016

From his early enthusiasm for American jazz in Berlin cabarets to being a member of Terezin’s celebrated Ghetto Swingers and surviving Auschwitz through his music, to post-war appearances with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, jazz remains a constant in a remarkable life story. […] Illustrated by a fascinating range of photographs.
– Ron Simpson, The Jazz Rag, January 2016

The life of a jazz legend and Auschwitz survivor [is] Coco Schumann’s remarkable story of how music kept him going. Feature and book excerpts.
– Stephanie Taralson​, LOLA, June 2017. 

For posterity, [Schumann] left behind a lifetime of music and memories, along with his remarkable autobiography, The Ghetto Swinger. […] Within its 192 pages – which includes 55 photos and illustrations – Schumann covers most of his life, from his birth in 1924 until about 1990, with wit, intelligence and deep feeling.
– JAZZIZ Magazine

Unusually interesting amidst the plethora of self-serving musician autobiographies. Schumann has a better story to tell…the hardest conditions, the value of well-placed friends and the vagaries of fortune as well as the impulse to create. The Ghetto Swinger is a rare glimpse into the persistence of nightlife in Berlin (once a wide-open city) under the Nazis. At Theresienstadt, the ostensibly model concentration camp, Schumann entertained the SS guards with his music like his life depended on it—and it did!
– David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express

It is rare and beautiful that someone can play with such sadness—and with such musical humor.
– Abendzeitung München 

Coco Schumann used his talent for improv playing with the great musicians of Central Europe until he was forcefully relocated to the Jewish prison at Terezín. The musical society there was miraculous, and Schumann grew from drummer to expressive performer in the company of great composers, conductors, classical musicians, and a lively swing band. After the war, he reconstructed his career and became a trailblazing jazz guitarist. This compelling personal and insightful tale of survival brings to light another brilliant and selfless Terezín artist. It is storytelling from the inside by a music-maker who rediscovered the humanizing power of jazz and swing at a time when it was needed most.
– Murry Sidlin, President and Creative Director of the Defiant Requiem Foundation

The recently published, never-before translated book by “Coco” Schumann traces his journey from Berlin’s pre-war nightlife to a band in Auschwitz and back to Berlin – and doesn’t miss a beat. […] Look for this unusual book.
– Israel National News

The Last Witnesses: Coco Schumann: “I didn’t want applause, I was in a concentration camp.”
– Der Spiegel , May 2015, viewable in the original German.

His story is inspiring and profound, yet told with a youthful whimsy. Coco Schumann is the very best jazz guitarist you need to know.
– Book Bit with Doc Kirby, WTBF AM/FM

An interesting and enlightening read. The passion and the clarity with which Schumann recalls his past experiences, playing with some of the greats, surviving World War II, his internment, are all very evident. I felt like I was listening to the gregarious great-uncle with stories almost too good to be true, other than the fact that they really are. This book very much feels like a conversation carried on between Schumann and anyone passionate about music.
– Reading for Sanity 

A spirited and colorful story about the art of humor, as well as the power of hope in circumstances where there is no hope. Even in the Auschwitz death camp, music gave Schumann hope, and he gave it to others in the message of his music.
– Satakunnan Kansa

Why should you read this book? Coco Schumann takes you on a trip through his life and the history that surrounded it. This book not only gives a new perspective on World War Two, but provides a closer look at the jazz scene of the twentieth century as well. Schumann grabs your interest and lets you witness his beautiful, humorous and shocking experiences from up close.
– BLVD (Holland)

The reader is able to sense the tension between the author’s reluctance to speak of the horror and the simultaneous compulsion to bear witness.
– The Jewish Book Council

Interview with coauthor Michaela Haas on “The Voice,” WQSC Charleston, SC March 1, 2016:

Read more:

Book review for The Ghetto Swinger by Rochel Sylvetsky
Israel National News (Arutz Shiva), March 16, 2016.

Jazz in Auschwitz – Coco Schumann Looks Back
Deutsche Welle, July 11, 2014. Feature article with video interview segments.

Coco Schumann – A Jazz Legend by Detlef Ott
VJAZZ, The Australian Jazz Museum’s magazine, May 2015. Feature article and collectible ephemera compiled by Ralph Powell.

Music in Hell by Ilario Tapio
Satakunnan Kansa (Saturday paper), Helsinki, March 7, 2016. Interview and feature in Finnish national newspaper, translated and viewable in the original.

Book review for The Ghetto Swinger by Jessica Heijmans
BLVD, May 4, 2016. Translated from Dutch and viewable in the original.

Drummer for the Nazis by Henk van Gelder
NRC Handelsblad, May 13, 2016. Translated from Dutch and viewable in the original.

Laughing Eyes by Thomas Winkler
The Atlantic Times, May 2009. Feature article on Coco Schumann.

Playing for My Life (interview with Coco Schumann) by Emilio Esbardo

Il Nuovo Berlinese, circa 1996, recently put online. Italian.

The Critical “Dance of the Duck”: Berthold Klostermann interviews Coco Schumann on his 90th birthday.
Fono Forum, May 2014, viewable in the original German.

The Ghetto Swinger is Recommended Reading for 2016 in The San Diego Jewish Journal and The Jewish Ledger.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Coco Schumann was born in Berlin on May 14, 1924. Throughout his life, he appeared in some of the best swing bands in Europe and alongside jazz notables like Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and Louis Armstrong. For years, he led his own quartet, was a composer and arranger, and taught at one of the most prestigious music conservatories in Berlin. He was the first musician in Germany to play electric guitar on stage and several times was named the best jazz guitarist in the country. His latest song collection appeared in 2014, and until his retirement later that year at 90 years old, Schumann was playing regularly in Berlin for packed crowds.

Recipient of the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany in 1989 and the Berlin Order of Merit in 2008, Schumann received the prestigious Ehrenpreis Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Record Critics in 2015.

As one of the last witnesses of the Holocaust, Schumann’s testimonial book is read widely in schools. A musical about his life played in Hamburg and Berlin in 2012 and 2018, and he has appeared in several documentary films. At the time of his death in Berlin at age 93, he was already a legend, considered one of Germany’s greatest swing and jazz musicians.

Of the many tributes published after his death on January 28, 2018, some of the more detailed include the Washington Post, Smithsonian.com, Israel National News, The Independent, the BBC, and The Jewish Chronicle.

Afterword by Michael H. Kater, a former professional jazz musician, who is Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus at York University in Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of ten books, including Hitler Youth (Harvard 2004) and Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present (Yale 2014). His latest book is Culture in Nazi Germany (Yale 2018).

Co-author Michaela Haas is a journalist and life coach as well as the author of Bouncing Forward: Transforming Bad Breaks into Break-Throughs (Simon and Schuster 2015), Dakini Power: Twelve Extraordinary Women Shaping the Transmission of Buddhism (Shambhala 2013), and a new book Crazy America (Random House/Goldmann 2017). She has written for Germany’s leading newspapers and was the host of an award-winning TV interview program. She holds a PhD in Asian studies.

Co-author Max Christian Graeff has written several books and essay collections (in German) published by Deutsches Taschenbuch Verlag and NordPark Verlag, has made art, given performances and lectures as well as having sung with the German rock band The Morlocks.

John Howard, an American who lived in Berlin for more than two decades, has translated books from German to English and edited and translated many screenplays and treatments for film. He taught English language and literature in the U.S., Germany and Beijing and has been engaged as a producer-director for German radio and television (SWF, BR, HR). He is currently working on a book about his experiences living in China.