![]() ![]() A recent survey found that many young Americans lack basic knowledge of the Holocaust, with 63 percent of respondents unaware that six million Jews were murdered in the genocide. “It has been a chance for me,” Ashkenazi writes, “to discover beautiful pieces that deserve to be included in the main violin repertoire.” Once the violins can be taken out again for live performances, however, they may serve another purpose. ![]() Courtesy Ricki Quinn / The SorayaĪshkenazi writes that, in recent years, he’s focused on using the Violins of Hope to play music by composers who were affected by the Holocaust, including Szymon Laks, who survived Auschwitz Mieczysław Weinberg, whose family was murdered, though he managed to flee Poland and Robert Dauber, who was murdered at the Dachau concentration camp. This violin, which includes graffiti from an anti-Semitic craftsman, is not played in concerts. Those filmed performances, which also featured violinists Lindsay Deutsch and Janice Mautner Markham, will be shared at a later date, the closest possible approximation of the concerts that couldn’t be held. When visiting the collection in Tel Aviv in 2017, Ashkenazi writes, “I tried about 10 of the instruments they didn’t need for the touring collection at that point in time, and this was the one that opened up and spoke to me the most.” When it came time, however, to record a performance at The Soraya before the violins went back to Israel, Ashkenazi chose to play the violin that survived Auschwitz. In an email, he says he doesn’t know much about this violin’s backstory, just that its former owner survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the United States. Since 2017, he has kept one of the violins on semi-permanent loan, making him the only musician in the world to have one of these instruments in his possession. The violinist Niv Ashkenazi first learned of the Violins of Hope in 2015, when the Cleveland Orchestra featured the instruments in a concert series. It’s not clear whether that musician was even aware of the inscription, as a later owner donated it to the collection after discovering its secret. ![]() The collection also includes a tainted violin that is never taken out for performance: Inside the instrument, an anti-Semitic craftsman scrawled the words “Heil Hitler 1936” alongside a large swastika, while repairing the violin for a Jewish player. The man who retrieved it kept it for the rest of his life, and it was donated to the Violins of Hope after his death. ![]() Another instrument was thrown out the window of a train transporting French Jews to Auschwitz, as its owner hoped a passerby might find it and keep it safe. After the war, penniless in a Displaced Persons camp, the musician sold his violin to an aid worker, whose son later donated it to the Violins of Hope. One violin survived the Auschwitz death camp, along with its former owner, who played the instrument for the entertainment of his Nazi captors. Courtesy Ricki Quinn / The SorayaĮach violin tells its own tale, some of which are particularly vivid. Virtuoso Niv Ashkenazi plays one of the violins in a filmed performance, to be released at a later date. It was another chapter in the long story of these instruments that lived history. In an effort to protect the instruments from theft or other damage during their unexpected time in storage, they ended up beneath the concert hall’s stage for months. Of the 88 violins that make up the collection’s full inventory, some 60 had been dispatched to Los Angeles for a spring concert series at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts (commonly known as The Soraya). Their prior owners include scores of Jewish musicians, some of whom died in the Nazi genocide and some of whom survived it. Many of these instruments, which belong to a collection known as the Violins of Hope, are in some way connected to the Holocaust. Throughout their long shared history, these violins had already endured far worse. ![]()
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