Holocaust Museum marks 20 years, pays tribute to the Bielski brothers
“You speak from the mind, but you sing from the soul,” Martin Fein once told Zira Eisenberg. She recalled those words of wisdom at the recent Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Awards dinner, presented by the Holocaust Museum Houston.
Eisenberg’s husband, Yossi Eisenberg, like many at the Hilton Americas that night, is a Holocaust survivor.
The 20th anniversary gala, which Fein co-chaired with his wife, Kelli Cohen Fein, celebrated both intellectual and musical expression.
Keynote speaker Ted Koppel, a broadcast journalist and the son of German Jews, warned the some 1,100 dinner guests of America’s susceptibility to cyber attacks, given its current financial and political state.
But before the former “Nightline” anchor’s address, the poignant program began with a Violins of Hope concert, arranged by Richard Brown.
“At some of the concentration camps, not all of them, the Nazis ordered music to be played by Jewish people held in the camps so that those arriving would feel less stressed,” said Ira Perry, executive director of the museum. “Those songs were very important to the Jewish community. They were intended to make everyone more manageable and calm them down.”
A video presentation, introduced by museum chair Gail Klein, showed that Violins of Hope founder Amnon Weinstein dedicated his life to restoring the violins played by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust as a way of honoring the members of his family who perished. From September 2015 through early January, his work was featured as Violins of Hope Cleveland, an unprecedented collaboration of exhibitions and concerts between Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Orchestra, Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Cleveland Institute of Music, Jewish Federation of Cleveland and ideastream. The project marked the violins’ second appearance in North America; many of the instruments had not been touched in 70 years. Weinstein, an attendee, received a standing ovation post-performance.
The awards posthumously honored the four Bielski brothers — Asael, Tuvia, Aron and Zus — who created a partisan camp in the Belarus forests that saved more than 1,200 Jews during World War II. Their story was portrayed in the film “Defiance,” starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber.
The Feins, along with co-chairs Rosalyn and Barry Margolis, presented Asael Bielski’s award to his daughter, Assaela Bielski Weinstein.
“The connection here really is that Assaela is Amnon Weinstein’s wife,” Perry shared. “Amnon has restored more than 50 violins, each one has a story, and he is married to the daughter of a Bielski brother. It was a perfect fit.”
“We Jews are a mixed bag,” Koppel said. “I am in awe of the Bielski brothers, of what they achieved in the forest. There have always been different means of survival.”
Past recipients of the Moral Courage Award include Colin Powell, Mia Farrow and Martin Luther King Jr. The message is about fighting hate.
It’s a lot of people representing the same beliefs that Lyndon Johnson upheld when he saved at least 42 Jews, Perry said. He took action to grant visas during the Holocaust, despite what it might do to his political career.
At the dinner, Koppel announced that he’d written a jingle poking fun at the presidential candidates. “Whether or not you like it, I’m going to sing about it.”
His strategy worked; when the evening wrapped, $1.2 million had been raised to support the museum.