Violins of Hope

My son bought me for my birthday the book: Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust - Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour, by James A. Grymes. Violins and Holocaust, my son thought, that's me. It is a riveting and sad book with not much hope, more like despair. It starts with the story of Amnon Weinstein, a luthier, violin repairer, who makes it his business to preserve not only violins with links to the Holocaust, but also their stories. Then there is the story of the great Polish violinist, Bronislaw Huberman, who gave up two years of his life and concert career to create the Palestine Philharmonic and use that as a vehicle to save musicians under Nazi threat together with their families, 1000 lives. But he did more than that. He imagined that Jews can preserve their European cultural heritage in the muddy, primitive settlement that Tel Aviv was at the time by creating a world class orchestra.. His impossible dream was like Weitzman's dream to create a world class university in Rehovot. The old Zionist dream of creating a new Jew, a peasant, a worker of the land, was at odds with Huberman's image of the Jew as a fiddler or Weitzman's image of a Jew as a scholar and scientist. Then there is the story of Erich Weininger. a butcher by trade but also a skilled violinist, who fled from Austria after a spell in Dachau and Buchenwald, entered Palestine illegally, where British guards of the internment camp were as brutal as the Nazis he fled, then was deported to Mauritius, until he could return to Palestine after the war. His father, denounced by a family friend, was killed by the Nazis for covering up the yellow star on his coat. Then a chapter is devoted to the orchestras and musicians in Auschwitz. More fortunate, Ernst Glaser was the leader of the Oslo Philharmonic and celebrated violin soloist in Norway. He was driven from his post and was lucky to escape to Sweden. Feivel Wininger from Romania witnessed some of the most horrific treatment of Jews in Transnistria, a strip of land between the river Dniester and Moldova, where some of the earliest and most brutal atrocities of the Holocaust took place. Feivel survived and could provide for his family because he played the violin. But one day, a former judge gave him a very valuable Amati violin because he had no further use for it, he was about to kill himself. Fellow Jews robbed Feivel of this violin. He, like Erich Weininger ended up in Israel after the war. Finally there is the story of Motele Schlein, a 12 year old boy from a small village near the Russian Polish border, a skilled young violinist, who witnessed the murder of his parents and his whole family, escaped and joined Uncle Misha's (Moshe Gildenman's) partisans. Using his skills as a violinist, he played for the German officers in their club. Seeing an opportunity, he obtained explosives and blew up the premises, killing the German officers. He was a feisty little boy, insisted on fighting the Germans, revenge the murder of his parents, and was killed in battle. Because the stories are about individuals and their fates, centred around their violins, the book is especially heart rending. The tragedy of Motele is particularly unforgettable and moving. And you think not only of the small handful who survived, but also about the vast number who didn't.