Author tells Book Fair of the violins of the Holocaust

By Eileen Wingard

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Eileen Wingard
Eileen Wingard

ENCINITAS, California — Amnon Weinstein, Tel Aviv’s  famous luthier, who learned his craft from his father, Moshe Weinstein, has been restoring violins used during the Holocaust. Seven such violins were exhibited at the University of North Carolina. The chair of the music department, Musicologist, Dr. James A. Grymes, fascinated by these restored instruments, set out to learn the background of each violin.

Grymes’ book, Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust—Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour is the result of his research. This remarkable book is divided into two main sections. The first part is a general history of musical performance in the ghettos, the concentration camps and in Nazi Germany under the Juedische Kulturebund.

The second half describes the lives of seven of the violinists who played the instruments which Amnon Weinstein restored.

In his recent San Diego Jewish Book Fair talk, Grymes showed excerpts of the documentary about Amnon Weinstein’s work (previously shown at a recent San Diego Jewish Film Festival.) Grymes also told the stories of two of the violinists found in his chapters.

Ernest Glazer, the German-trained concertmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic, was about to play Ole Bull’s violin, a Guernarius, when the concert hall became infiltrated by Norwegian Nazi Youth.

The conductor changed the order of the program, the soloist did not go on, but escaped through the backstage door while fist fights ensued between an enraged audience fighting the Nazi youth. Glazer survived the Holocaust in Mandatory Palestine.

The second story Grymes related was about 12-year-old Motele, was taken in by a Jewish partisan brigade in the forest of Belarus. He escaped to the forest with his violin when the Nazis killed his parents and sister.  The young boy was instructed to perform as a street musician, and his talent was noticed by a German officer who brought him to play for Nazi officers and SS men at a nearby inn. They enjoyed his music and even fitted him with a small-sized German uniform.

At the inn, the Nazis stopped for food and rest before going to the front. Motele found a deserted passageway in the cellar of the inn. Before he returned to the forest each night, he placed his violin in a hidden corner and took an empty violin case home, returning with the case filled with explosives, which he planted in the cellar. Eventually, he gathered the forty  pounds necessary to detonate, destroying the inn and all the people in it. When he heard the blast, he shouted, “that was for my parents and sister, Batyale.” Motele did not survive the war. He was killed by a German bullet. Only his restored violin lives on to tell his story.

Opening the program, my daughter, Myla Wingard and I played duet versions of twomusical selections mentioned in the book, Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, performed by the orchestra in Auschwitz, and Yellin’s A Yiddishe Mome, performed by a Rumanian-Jewish violinist, Feivel Wininger.

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Wingard is a former violinist with the San Diego Symphony and a freelance writer focusing on the arts.  She may be contacted via eileen.wingard@sdjewishworld.com