Holocaust-era string instruments to sing again

Nine stringed instruments dating from the darkest days of the second world war will make music once again, Thursday at the Palladium Theater.

These instruments – seven violins, a viola and a cello – were originally owned and played by Jewish residents of Eastern Europe, and other countries, during the Nazi occupation. Some survived because their owners did.

Others were discovered stashed away when Allied troops liberated the death camps.

Avshalom Weinstein is an Istanbul, Turkey-based professional restorer. He began the touring exhibit Violins of Hope with his father, Amnon, in the late 1990s.

Avshalon (Avshi) Weinstein.

“It’s another way of looking at the war,” said the 49-year-old Weinstein, who’ll accompany the instruments to St. Petersburg. “I mean, how many of us connect war with orchestras and concerts and music? It was a part of almost every single camp. Even in the ghettos.”

Because violin music was an integral and important element of Jewish life, the Nazis used prison orchestras to lull Jews, arriving via suffocating railroad boxcars, into a false sense of security.

From his shop in Tel Aviv, Weinstein’s grandfather Moshe made and restored violins for decades. In time, he was joined by his son Amnon, who exceled at instrument-making and restoration work. Born in 1975, Avshalom – Avshi for short – joined the business when he was old enough.

Amnon Weinstein.

Every so often, someone would bring in an old, scarred or broken violin, or another stringed instrument, that had a family connection to the war. In 1999, Amnon Weinstein gave his first lecture on the “Violins of Hope” in Dresden, Germany. The following year, the restored instruments were played, for the first time since the war, in Istanbul.

“After that first lecture, my father spoke on a radio show,” Weinstein remembered. “People started bringing instruments, and once we started doing more concerts and more programs, more people came and brought instruments – because more people heard about it.”

Although Amnon Weinstein passed away in 2024 – he was 84 – the work continues. “Just last week,” his son explained, “I got an email from someone who’s going to come and meet me in Tampa, and give me his uncle’s violin.

“This is how it started, and now today it’s quite a big thing.”

Weinstein estimated Violins of Hope has 60 instruments – “give or take” – in restored and ready to play condition. Some came with detailed origin stories, while others remain mysteries. “It really depends. Some of the owners, we know what happened to him or her, and some we don’t really know. So we have fragments of information, and some are a bit more detailed.

“Many people never said anything, so that was also a problem, in a way. So it really depends.”

For example: Grandfather Moshe and his wife, Golda, who fled Poland in 1938. “My grandparents from my father’s side, they never said one word about their families. We had no idea. We don’t even know how many sisters and brothers my grandmother had.

“I know of many, many other people, survivors – more from their sons, daughters and third generations, that their grandparents never, ever spoke about it.”

The Petersburg event will feature a double-string quartet playing the historical instruments. TFO principal cellist Yoni Draiblate will lead the group and conduct. The musicians are Yefim Romanov, Natalie Yu, Levi Mitze-Circiumaru, Michelle Kim-Painter, Chi Li, Dan Urbanowicz, Yoni Draiblate and Victor Minke Huls.

It’s presented by the Florida Holocaust Museum, which has a webpage including detailed information on the instruments at hand. Additional details, and tickets, are also available there. There is a pre-show VIP reception available.

Weinstein and his instruments have traveled to Rome, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Cleveland, London, Washington D.C, Sarasota, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Richmond, Chicago and Paris.

The Violins of Hope program, he said, is essential in the 21^st century, “because I think we have to remember our history, and try to learn from it. Holocaust education, and history education in general, is not as it used to be. It doesn’t take an important part in people’s life any more, unfortunately.

“I think it’s a very important thing for us to know our past, our history, and maybe even to learn from it. Some of the schools that I go to, the only Holocaust history they hear is the 45- or 50-minute lecture we give them.”

Recommended Reading: Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust – Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour, by James A. Grymes (Harper Collins).