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.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
The Phoenix, loyalty and "us"
When I was young and at an impressionable age football meant a lot to me. The Hungarian football team with its bandy-legged fat little captain, Puskas, was the best in the world and I jogged my heart out around Palmerston North to be fit and perhaps one day move from the school's third, i.e. bottom eleven to the next grade, and perhaps one day even make the first eleven. I never quite made it, I left school early, played for a university team until one day I couldn't find the ground we were to play at and called it quits. But the drama of football stayed with me all these years, even if only at a low, subconscious level. With the establishment of Phoenix, the local AFL franchise I had a team to be passionate about. I follow their game every week on television, read every article about its players, It is as if I know each of them personally (I saw Paul Ifill once, very smartly dressed, good looking, coming towards me) I agonize when they pass the ball to the opposing team, are too easily dispossessed, I scream when they miss a clear shot on goal. When they win it makes me feel better for the rest of the week. My image is not that of a man who cares about such ephemeral matters as football, football in a place where only Poms and Europeans care about the game. I wear glasses, play chess, listen to classical music, why does football matter to me. To understand that I think of the deep roots of the game in my genes; I remember clearly listening with my father to the broadcast of the Hungarian - Austrian game with the hardly intelligible, rapid, overexcited commentary by Pluhar, the celebrated radio commentator. My father played, as a boy and young man for an amateur youth team of Ferencvaros when Ferencvaros and MTK were the top teams in Hungary, and he witnessed in 1911 the ticker tape parade though the main streets of the ninth district with players carried on the shoulders of supporters when Ferencvaros beat I Woking F.C, in England, at the time one of the best English teams. Schlosser, the greatest goal scorer was remembered in our household. So football is something I feel in my guts. Once I even paid good money and went to a game, but going on my own is not the same as sitting at home in front of the television and letting my hair down.
When I was young and at an impressionable age football meant a lot to me. The Hungarian football team with its bandy-legged fat little captain, Puskas, was the best in the world and I jogged my heart out around Palmerston North to be fit and perhaps one day move from the school's third, i.e. bottom eleven to the next grade, and perhaps one day even make the first eleven. I never quite made it, I left school early, played for a university team until one day I couldn't find the ground we were to play at and called it quits. But the drama of football stayed with me all these years, even if only at a low, subconscious level. With the establishment of Phoenix, the local AFL franchise I had a team to be passionate about. I follow their game every week on television, read every article about its players, It is as if I know each of them personally (I saw Paul Ifill once, very smartly dressed, good looking, coming towards me) I agonize when they pass the ball to the opposing team, are too easily dispossessed, I scream when they miss a clear shot on goal. When they win it makes me feel better for the rest of the week. My image is not that of a man who cares about such ephemeral matters as football, football in a place where only Poms and Europeans care about the game. I wear glasses, play chess, listen to classical music, why does football matter to me. To understand that I think of the deep roots of the game in my genes; I remember clearly listening with my father to the broadcast of the Hungarian - Austrian game with the hardly intelligible, rapid, overexcited commentary by Pluhar, the celebrated radio commentator. My father played, as a boy and young man for an amateur youth team of Ferencvaros when Ferencvaros and MTK were the top teams in Hungary, and he witnessed in 1911 the ticker tape parade though the main streets of the ninth district with players carried on the shoulders of supporters when Ferencvaros beat I Woking F.C, in England, at the time one of the best English teams. Schlosser, the greatest goal scorer was remembered in our household. So football is something I feel in my guts. Once I even paid good money and went to a game, but going on my own is not the same as sitting at home in front of the television and letting my hair down.
There is a lot I don't know about Central Africa
There is a lot I don't know, and one of the good things about writing my almost daily blog is that it makes me learn things, so that in the end I know a little more. I knew almost nothing about the Central African Republic until I read Jon Lee Anderson's challenging and interesting article in the New Yorker (October 20, 2014). I didn't know that the Central African Republic with its land area larger than France and a bit of Europe thrown in and with the population of New Zealand it is one of the richest lands in terms of natural resources, forests, gold, uranium, oil. Yet its people are among the poorest and things are not getting better. Blame the French who ruled the land and stole its riches from the time the European powers carved up the map of Africa until independence in the 1960s. But although the French left behind a viable and potentially prosperous country when they ceded power, things went from bad to worse since independence, so that it is now a virtually failed state. Until recently Christians, Muslims and animists lived in reasonable harmony. Muslims made up 15% of the population. Then they formed an Islamist militia, the Seleka, and started murdering their Christian neighbours. The Christians in response formed their own militia, the antibalaka, who slaughtered Muslims indiscriminately. It was not a genocide, Muslims and Christians were not different races. It was a religious war. Most of us being ignorant of large chunks of Africa dismiss such carnage as Africa, what would you expect from these primitive people. But if an African would look at European history, where in my lifetime German protestants and German Catholics, and even German atheists who only believed in the German folk and their glorious Wagnerian roots murdered German Jews, perhaps he would view Europeans as a primitive people despite their flash technology. And would think of Europe of the twentieth century with its ruthless dictators and unbridled carnage as failed states, that failed with the beginning of the First World War, which grew from small skirmishes into a wholesale conflagration just as Africa spawned failed states after the end of the colonial era, and continues to destroy states to the present day as a result of the colonial heritage. States fail because neighbours kill neighbours, because a multicity of ethnic groups vie for supremacy. They kill each other for religion, for ideology, for perceived grievances, but kill each other they do. Militant factions split, with a group always more extreme than the next, so that bringing them together to make peace is an impossibly challenging task. If their priority would be to get richer, live a better life, make the world a better place for their children they would desist from fighting, but irrational hartred is a greater motivator than self interest.
There is a lot I don't know, and one of the good things about writing my almost daily blog is that it makes me learn things, so that in the end I know a little more. I knew almost nothing about the Central African Republic until I read Jon Lee Anderson's challenging and interesting article in the New Yorker (October 20, 2014). I didn't know that the Central African Republic with its land area larger than France and a bit of Europe thrown in and with the population of New Zealand it is one of the richest lands in terms of natural resources, forests, gold, uranium, oil. Yet its people are among the poorest and things are not getting better. Blame the French who ruled the land and stole its riches from the time the European powers carved up the map of Africa until independence in the 1960s. But although the French left behind a viable and potentially prosperous country when they ceded power, things went from bad to worse since independence, so that it is now a virtually failed state. Until recently Christians, Muslims and animists lived in reasonable harmony. Muslims made up 15% of the population. Then they formed an Islamist militia, the Seleka, and started murdering their Christian neighbours. The Christians in response formed their own militia, the antibalaka, who slaughtered Muslims indiscriminately. It was not a genocide, Muslims and Christians were not different races. It was a religious war. Most of us being ignorant of large chunks of Africa dismiss such carnage as Africa, what would you expect from these primitive people. But if an African would look at European history, where in my lifetime German protestants and German Catholics, and even German atheists who only believed in the German folk and their glorious Wagnerian roots murdered German Jews, perhaps he would view Europeans as a primitive people despite their flash technology. And would think of Europe of the twentieth century with its ruthless dictators and unbridled carnage as failed states, that failed with the beginning of the First World War, which grew from small skirmishes into a wholesale conflagration just as Africa spawned failed states after the end of the colonial era, and continues to destroy states to the present day as a result of the colonial heritage. States fail because neighbours kill neighbours, because a multicity of ethnic groups vie for supremacy. They kill each other for religion, for ideology, for perceived grievances, but kill each other they do. Militant factions split, with a group always more extreme than the next, so that bringing them together to make peace is an impossibly challenging task. If their priority would be to get richer, live a better life, make the world a better place for their children they would desist from fighting, but irrational hartred is a greater motivator than self interest.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Sixty years ago
In 1954 I had a job at what was then called Whitcombe & Tombs, later. after joining Coulls Summerville and Wilkie to become Whitcoulls, a nationwide chain of much maligned bookshops. After starting in the New Zealand Books and Bibles department working with experienced bookmen, I was promoted, or demoted, but certainly moved up, to the upper floor, to the education department. It was not a bad job, I spent a lot of my time looking up books for customers in Whitakers, the giant catalogue of published books, not to be confused with Joe Whitaker, the profoundly deaf but very knowledgeable head of the department. Spending so much time following up the queries of customers and generally looking after customers was considered by some a great waste of time, but in the relaxed atmosphere of old Whitcombe & Tombs nobody cared. Many of these customers were school teachers, intelligent, stimulating, likeable people, and it reignited my ambition to be a teacher. What profession could be better than moulding young minds. I enrolled at Teachers' College, and as I looked back on it, I was, amazingly, accepted. How anyone could imagine that I would ever make a successful teacher, I don't know; an insecure young man still sorting out his identity, grappling with a language that was by then very familiar as a literary vehicle, but not quite as a medium of everyday colloquial communication. But accepted I was, and I was paid for being there. Teachers' College then was an institution that is now probably beyond the imagination of most, Its main objective was to turn simple semi-educated country people, mainly young women, into educated thinking well-rounded human beings, who then could become stimulating teachers, in many cases in schools that stifled their creativity. Having a few oddballs like me around was part of their education. The mid-1950s were interesting times. Stalin had just died, he was replaced by men who colluded with him but were not comfortable with his heritage. Khrushchev revealed the atrocities of Stalin's time, and with that undermined the faith of old time communists and fellow travellers. In New Zealand students cared about world affairs, strummed their guitars and sang ballads about the working man, wrote biting satires for the annual university extrav, shows that would fill the Opera House, and drank prodigious amounts of of beer. We watched sad, dark Italian, French and Russian movies, and I wrote stories for the Teachers' College student magazine, stories that are now mercifully lost. Idealism was in the air, we wanted to make the world a better place. We sneered at people who wanted to make money. We assumed that we would all live comfortable lives, didn't care about having more than we needed. We went tramping in the bush, some also went hunting, we had a wonderful world at our doorstep and didn't want more. I thought of all this having had a friend from those days over for coffee. It is not that those were happier time, a better world, it is just that it is was a time that is now hard to recapture. The world moved on, become noisier, more competitive, and the hope for a better world in the future is gone.
In 1954 I had a job at what was then called Whitcombe & Tombs, later. after joining Coulls Summerville and Wilkie to become Whitcoulls, a nationwide chain of much maligned bookshops. After starting in the New Zealand Books and Bibles department working with experienced bookmen, I was promoted, or demoted, but certainly moved up, to the upper floor, to the education department. It was not a bad job, I spent a lot of my time looking up books for customers in Whitakers, the giant catalogue of published books, not to be confused with Joe Whitaker, the profoundly deaf but very knowledgeable head of the department. Spending so much time following up the queries of customers and generally looking after customers was considered by some a great waste of time, but in the relaxed atmosphere of old Whitcombe & Tombs nobody cared. Many of these customers were school teachers, intelligent, stimulating, likeable people, and it reignited my ambition to be a teacher. What profession could be better than moulding young minds. I enrolled at Teachers' College, and as I looked back on it, I was, amazingly, accepted. How anyone could imagine that I would ever make a successful teacher, I don't know; an insecure young man still sorting out his identity, grappling with a language that was by then very familiar as a literary vehicle, but not quite as a medium of everyday colloquial communication. But accepted I was, and I was paid for being there. Teachers' College then was an institution that is now probably beyond the imagination of most, Its main objective was to turn simple semi-educated country people, mainly young women, into educated thinking well-rounded human beings, who then could become stimulating teachers, in many cases in schools that stifled their creativity. Having a few oddballs like me around was part of their education. The mid-1950s were interesting times. Stalin had just died, he was replaced by men who colluded with him but were not comfortable with his heritage. Khrushchev revealed the atrocities of Stalin's time, and with that undermined the faith of old time communists and fellow travellers. In New Zealand students cared about world affairs, strummed their guitars and sang ballads about the working man, wrote biting satires for the annual university extrav, shows that would fill the Opera House, and drank prodigious amounts of of beer. We watched sad, dark Italian, French and Russian movies, and I wrote stories for the Teachers' College student magazine, stories that are now mercifully lost. Idealism was in the air, we wanted to make the world a better place. We sneered at people who wanted to make money. We assumed that we would all live comfortable lives, didn't care about having more than we needed. We went tramping in the bush, some also went hunting, we had a wonderful world at our doorstep and didn't want more. I thought of all this having had a friend from those days over for coffee. It is not that those were happier time, a better world, it is just that it is was a time that is now hard to recapture. The world moved on, become noisier, more competitive, and the hope for a better world in the future is gone.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Who will come to the aid of Israel
In today's news we read about an Arab driving his car into a small crowd waiting at the train station, injuring seven and killing a three months old baby. The murderer was hailed as a hero and a martyr. Arabs were throwing stones at the light train. There is concern that this may be the beginning of a new intifada. If this happens more Arabs will be killed, more will be considered martyrs, the world will condemn Israel for its necessarily heavy-handed response. Suppose the entire Middle East gets taken over by an Islamic fundamentalist movement and the conquest of Israel becomes its aim. Suppose it has access not only to a vast motivated army but also to the latest weaponry stolen from Arab regimes armed by the Americans and the Russians; who will then speak up for Israel and who will come to its aid.
Today I talked to a group of senior students from Hastings Girls High School and I mentioned that after the war I could not understand why the Jews did not resist, reported to where they were told to report, lined up when they were told to line up, marched to the bank of the Danube to be shot, and because I could not understand this I became a Zionist and think of myself still as a Zionist to this day. The girls did no know what I meant by Zionist and Zionism. With all the Israel bashing over the last few months in the media, with Zionist being depicted as aggressors, brutal occupiers, as distinct from Jews who are perceived as good law abiding citizens, I was delighted that the girls did not have this image of the Zionist. May be they will grasp that it is not OK to kill Jews, or even to throw stones at them, threaten them, endanger them when they hitchhike, threaten their young children with abduction. It is OK to talk with the Jews, to try to arrive at some resolution to the war the Arabs waged for close to ninety years, it is OK to try to improve the lives of Arabs along with the lives of Jews. It is not OK to hail murderers as martyrs and make the lives of more Arabs miserable.
In today's news we read about an Arab driving his car into a small crowd waiting at the train station, injuring seven and killing a three months old baby. The murderer was hailed as a hero and a martyr. Arabs were throwing stones at the light train. There is concern that this may be the beginning of a new intifada. If this happens more Arabs will be killed, more will be considered martyrs, the world will condemn Israel for its necessarily heavy-handed response. Suppose the entire Middle East gets taken over by an Islamic fundamentalist movement and the conquest of Israel becomes its aim. Suppose it has access not only to a vast motivated army but also to the latest weaponry stolen from Arab regimes armed by the Americans and the Russians; who will then speak up for Israel and who will come to its aid.
Today I talked to a group of senior students from Hastings Girls High School and I mentioned that after the war I could not understand why the Jews did not resist, reported to where they were told to report, lined up when they were told to line up, marched to the bank of the Danube to be shot, and because I could not understand this I became a Zionist and think of myself still as a Zionist to this day. The girls did no know what I meant by Zionist and Zionism. With all the Israel bashing over the last few months in the media, with Zionist being depicted as aggressors, brutal occupiers, as distinct from Jews who are perceived as good law abiding citizens, I was delighted that the girls did not have this image of the Zionist. May be they will grasp that it is not OK to kill Jews, or even to throw stones at them, threaten them, endanger them when they hitchhike, threaten their young children with abduction. It is OK to talk with the Jews, to try to arrive at some resolution to the war the Arabs waged for close to ninety years, it is OK to try to improve the lives of Arabs along with the lives of Jews. It is not OK to hail murderers as martyrs and make the lives of more Arabs miserable.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Timaru, Allan Hubbard, the Volkswagen and the New Zealand psyche
Whenever I have the time I spend as much as an hour reading the newspaper. You might wonder what is there that takes so long to read. The real news items are either not covered or are touched on in brief uninformative paragraphs, while the pages are full of inconsequential stories that border on the personal and intrusive. But tucked away, somewhere in the back pages, there are articles that may have significance beyond the daily gossip. There was an article about the trial of the directors of South Canterbury Fince Co, at which all but one of the directors were acquitted. I find the South Canterbury Finance Co, and its principal director, Allan Hubbard, interesting. The collapse of SCF cost the New Zealand tax payer NZ$1.58 billion, because the funds of SCF were guaranteed by the Crown Guarantee Scheme. That is a lot of money, just under the total spent on Defence, just over 10% of the total spent on Education or Health. Timaru is quite a pleasant country town, with an attractive beach and majestic mountains in the background, but it is hardly the financial hub of the country, yet by the time of its collapse SCF was one of the largest finance companies of the country, and Allan Hubbard, its elderly crumpled chief, driving an old Volkswagen and living in a modest bungalow was thought of as a smart finacial guru. He managed to fool not only 35000 investors, experienced financial advisors, but also Treasury, who never wondered what a small time country accountant is doing footing it with the experienced financiers of this world. There is something in the New Zealand mentality, the No. 8 fencing wire attitude, that there is nothing an ordinary hardworking bloke can't fix with a little ingenuity, that hepled to perpetuate this illusion and gigantic fraud. There was the belief about that good old grandfatherly Allan Hubbard from a small country town that saw no change, no innovation for a generation or more can be trusted more than the flash city boys in their smart suits and resplendent offices. Cheating people who should have known better proved to be so simple that even good old Hubbard could devise such a scheme. You own a number of different companies. One of them is losing money, so you sell it off to one of the other companies just before the annual balance date, so that the losses don't show up in the balance sheet, and the day after the the report of a successful profitable year, the loss making company is sold back again to the original business that owned it before. It is a simple money go round, that even a simple reader of the finacial pages should have seen though, but the experts at the Treasury, and the savvy stockbrokers didn't ask the fundamental questions they should have, how did grandad, working from a modest Timaru office managed to accumulate NZ$1.55 billion of loans and debentures. What was in the water in Timaru that made people there so much smarter?
Whenever I have the time I spend as much as an hour reading the newspaper. You might wonder what is there that takes so long to read. The real news items are either not covered or are touched on in brief uninformative paragraphs, while the pages are full of inconsequential stories that border on the personal and intrusive. But tucked away, somewhere in the back pages, there are articles that may have significance beyond the daily gossip. There was an article about the trial of the directors of South Canterbury Fince Co, at which all but one of the directors were acquitted. I find the South Canterbury Finance Co, and its principal director, Allan Hubbard, interesting. The collapse of SCF cost the New Zealand tax payer NZ$1.58 billion, because the funds of SCF were guaranteed by the Crown Guarantee Scheme. That is a lot of money, just under the total spent on Defence, just over 10% of the total spent on Education or Health. Timaru is quite a pleasant country town, with an attractive beach and majestic mountains in the background, but it is hardly the financial hub of the country, yet by the time of its collapse SCF was one of the largest finance companies of the country, and Allan Hubbard, its elderly crumpled chief, driving an old Volkswagen and living in a modest bungalow was thought of as a smart finacial guru. He managed to fool not only 35000 investors, experienced financial advisors, but also Treasury, who never wondered what a small time country accountant is doing footing it with the experienced financiers of this world. There is something in the New Zealand mentality, the No. 8 fencing wire attitude, that there is nothing an ordinary hardworking bloke can't fix with a little ingenuity, that hepled to perpetuate this illusion and gigantic fraud. There was the belief about that good old grandfatherly Allan Hubbard from a small country town that saw no change, no innovation for a generation or more can be trusted more than the flash city boys in their smart suits and resplendent offices. Cheating people who should have known better proved to be so simple that even good old Hubbard could devise such a scheme. You own a number of different companies. One of them is losing money, so you sell it off to one of the other companies just before the annual balance date, so that the losses don't show up in the balance sheet, and the day after the the report of a successful profitable year, the loss making company is sold back again to the original business that owned it before. It is a simple money go round, that even a simple reader of the finacial pages should have seen though, but the experts at the Treasury, and the savvy stockbrokers didn't ask the fundamental questions they should have, how did grandad, working from a modest Timaru office managed to accumulate NZ$1.55 billion of loans and debentures. What was in the water in Timaru that made people there so much smarter?
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Kristallnacht Memorial Concert
Over the last few weeks I have worked on organizing a Kristallnacht Memorial Concert. To have a concert to commemorate Kristallnacht, not speeches, came out of the Recovering Forbidden Voices conference arranged by the NZ School of Music and the Victoria University History and Languages departments. For four days we listened to a wide range of music suppressed at the time. Some of this music was so moving, and performed so brilliantly by students of the School of Music, that I thought that these should be heard again by a different, and wider audience. The concert will mirror recent Jewish history, from Bloch's image of the Jewish schtetl and Mendelssohn's tribute to emancipation, to music by composers who escaped or survived Kristallnacht and ended up in New Zealand, Georg Tintner and Richard Fuchs, a moving memorial music for solo cello by Laurence Scherr, and the heartbreaking song cycle of setting of poems by children from Theresienstadt, I Never Saw another Butterfly, by Ellwood Derr. Details of this concert are on the Holocaust Centre of NZ website: http://holocaustcentre.org.nz/
Over the last few weeks I have worked on organizing a Kristallnacht Memorial Concert. To have a concert to commemorate Kristallnacht, not speeches, came out of the Recovering Forbidden Voices conference arranged by the NZ School of Music and the Victoria University History and Languages departments. For four days we listened to a wide range of music suppressed at the time. Some of this music was so moving, and performed so brilliantly by students of the School of Music, that I thought that these should be heard again by a different, and wider audience. The concert will mirror recent Jewish history, from Bloch's image of the Jewish schtetl and Mendelssohn's tribute to emancipation, to music by composers who escaped or survived Kristallnacht and ended up in New Zealand, Georg Tintner and Richard Fuchs, a moving memorial music for solo cello by Laurence Scherr, and the heartbreaking song cycle of setting of poems by children from Theresienstadt, I Never Saw another Butterfly, by Ellwood Derr. Details of this concert are on the Holocaust Centre of NZ website: http://holocaustcentre.org.nz/
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