Violins that belonged to Holocaust victims to be used in Toronto show

Article content

The Violins of Hope reveal themselves as many antiques do. Sometimes people move house, or clean out attics or basements, or sometimes an elderly person dies and a grieving child tries to do right by their parents’ stuff.

But these violins, on display now in Toronto for the first time as a part of a long-running global tour, are more poignant than most old paintings, tea sets or grandfather clocks.

Article content

These are violins that made music during the Holocaust, in Jewish hands in pre-war Europe, at recitals and at weddings, and sometimes even in forced performances at extermination camps including Auschwitz.

Doing right by these violins means professionally restoring them to make them sing again.

Thanks to an inherited family passion project, violins like this tend to come to Avshalom Weinstein’s workshop in Istanbul, just as they did to his late father Amnon’s atelier in Tel Aviv, where father trained son as a luthier.

Violins of Hope began in the 1990s when Amnon did a radio interview, and word spread of this man bringing Holocaust violins back to life. Both men became top authorities in the provenance of Holocaust instruments, with a collection of more than 100, occasionally larger pieces like cellos, but mostly violins, which are small enough to grab in a hurry, and to be concealed for a long time.

Sometimes the grown children who inherit these instruments barely know the provenance. Many survivors did not talk, and many of their violins fell silent forever.

Other times, they come ornamented with family legend that Avshalom can see through, knowing as much as he does about the uniquely moving history of classical music performance in Auschwitz. He mentions a woman he knows, aged 91, an alumna of that camp orchestra. She does not talk about it. Eventually, no one who actually remembers will talk about it. But a violin lasts, sometimes for centuries, and can be restored.

Article content

Article content

Tonight, there is a performance at Toronto’s Koerner Hall with some of these violins being played by the Canadian Opera Company’s Orchestra, along with cantor Netanel Hershtik.

Reid Stekel, who chaired the event and organized the exhibit at Chabad on Bayview, said he deliberately arranged the musical program to start and end with Beethoven in recognition of the Nazi propagandistic use of his music and efforts to ban its performance by Jews.

Although there is fine craftsmanship on display, and some of the Violins of Hope were luxury items when they were new, many of the ones on display and in the Weinstein collection are mass produced department store violins made in France or Germany that sold for a few dollars at the turn in the early 20th century.

One is grotesque, never to be played again. When its Jewish former owner took it for repair in 1936, a craftsman defaced it inside with a crudely drawn swastika and cursive “heil hitler,” then sealed it up, leaving a sloppy drip of varnish on the inside. Discovered years later by an American luthier in Washington, D.C., it was nearly burnt to destroy the defiled instrument, but instead tours in this exhibit under strict conditions that it will never be played again. It had to be omitted from a recent tour of Germany due to strict laws against displaying the symbol.

Article content

Others are fun to the point of whimsy, such as one that is inlaid on the back with a Star of David in mother of pearl, which Avshalom said does not do the sound any favours, but testifies to its use in joyous Klezmer music, as if for dancing at a Jewish wedding in Europe in the 1930s.

Nearly a century later in Toronto, Edward Wu, 15, a student at Agincourt Collegiate Institute and at the Royal Conservatory of Music, played that violin for the students, but first he warmed up in an impromptu recital in the synagogue’s entrance hall. He played a violin concerto by Wolfgang Korngold, a Jewish Austrian former child prodigy who emigrated to America in the 1930s and was later a major Hollywood composer.

Korngold dedicated that piece to Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav, the famous composer and Korngold’s mentor. Mahler’s niece, Alma Rosé, who came to be known as “Frau Alma,” figured prominently in a story Avshalom told the gathered children about Violette Jacquet-Silberstein, born in Romania in 1925 to Jewish-Hungarian parents.

Violette’s mother said she should learn the violin because you never know when it might be useful, and so she did, but was not very good. Later in Auschwitz, separated from her parents whom she would never see again, she auditioned for the Women’s Orchestra under Frau Alma’s leadership, barely making the cut, but benefitting all the same from easier conditions given to musicians. As the war neared a close and retreating Germans prepared to move prisoners of Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, Frau Alma saved Violette’s life by falsely telling a guard he could not hurt her because she was her finest violinist.

Article content

Her violin is on display, made by Jerome Thibouville in France around the turn of the century. It has been refurbished and strung, but Violette never played it again after liberation, which is common among concentration camp musicians who were no longer forced to play to survive.

Several Toronto elementary schools have toured the exhibit recently on field trips. Last Thursday, one class listened to Rita Starkman, whose birth in 1941 makes her one of the youngest living Holocaust survivors. She told them her harrowing story of being given over as an infant to people her parents hoped could keep her safe, but how she was left on a train, which led to adoption by a Polish Catholic woman, and eventually to a traumatic reunion with her birth parents who tried to claim her back. Returned to them by a court, she grew up in Canada and like many survivors has had the poignant experience of returning as an adult to Poland and to the people who once cared for her.

The school tours also did a scavenger hunt for details in the exhibit, and participated by adding a card to a wall under the banner “I HOPE FOR:” A few were cheeky, such as the student who wrote “me and my mom to get the Bruse spring-steen tickets.” But wishes for peace were overwhelming.

Article content

The students were invited to reflect with these words by Rabbi Levi Gansburg: “If we can remember that we are all connected, each representing a part of the greater unity in our universe, then we can truly respect one another, in how we speak to one another and how we treat each other’s possessions. Let us cherish our families, choose kindness over harm, and extend our respect to all living beings, including animal life. May we also find the strength to uphold and respect the rule of law, so that our society may flourish in harmony and integrity, and never again should any group endure the unimaginable pain of events like the Holocaust.”

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Article content