Caraibisch Uitzicht recently featured a beautiful work by Suriname-born Josef Nassy (1904-1976): “Reading to a Young Man” (oil on canvas, 65 x 50 cm; New Gallery Shots, Haarlem). The post explains that in this painting Nassy was most probably representing the preparations for a Bar Mitzvah.

Josef Nassy (1904-1976)—whose full name was Josef Johan Cosmo Nassy—was a black expatriate artist of Jewish descent, born in Paramaribo, Surinam (formerly Dutch Guiana). Nassy was living in Belgium when World War II began, and was one of about 2,000 civilians holding American passports who were confined in German internment camps during the war, in case, three different camps He survived Nazi imprisonment and was able to depict his experiences through art. He created over 200 drawings and paintings while at the concentration camps.

The work of Joseph Nassy has been compiled in In the Shadow of the Tower: The Works of Josef Nassy 1942-1945, published by The Severin Wunderman Museum in Irvine, California, in 1989.

For original post, see http://caraibischeletteren.blogspot.com/2011/07/joseph-nassy.html

For full biography of Josef Nassy, see http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005677