November 01, 2016
BY JACQUELINE MENDELS BIRN
One of my best friends, Jeanne Rosenthal—the viola player in one of my quartets that performs on International Holocaust Remembrance Day—told me of an exhibit in Cleveland, her hometown, of violins that were found after World War II. Those violins had belonged to Jewish musicians whose lives ended in the gas chambers after the Germans stole their instruments.
One day, a violin repairman—a luthier named Amnon Weinstein—was given a violin case with a violin inside. That instrument had been burnt to ashes; he could not repair it. However, about 10 years later, he started looking for violins that he might be able to repair. By now, he has 50 instruments in his studio-workshop and has restored some of the instruments to produce a magnificent sound.
During a visit with my friend Jeanne to Cleveland, we stayed at her parents’ home. After welcoming me with open arms, we all went together to the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage. There, we saw 17 of those beautifully restored violins exhibited, and we learned when, where, and how each violin that had belonged to a murdered musician was found. We heard a concert by the Cavani Quartet, which is in residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
The first violinist played one of the restored instruments—the “Auschwitz violin”—and the music that was performed that night made me shiver, because I was thinking of the original owner, who had been murdered in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. The quartet played a piece by Erwin Schulhoff, who himself was killed in 1942. Listening to this music composed by inmates in ghettos and concentration camps makes you cry while thinking of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust.
The first violinist, who knew me, asked my permission to interview me as a Holocaust survivor and as a hidden child. I come from a family of musicians, some of whom survived, either through a Kindertransport or at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This musical background in my family is probably why my mother introduced me to the cello.
© 2016 Jacqueline Mendels Birn. The text, images, and audio and video clips on this website are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.
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