Enduring strings

‘Violins of Hope,’ an exhibition at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, showcases instruments that survived the Holocaust and tell stories of their owners

It is a violin that looks like so many others. ¶ But it has been where few others have. ¶ An Auschwitz concentration camp. ¶ “It belonged to a gentleman who played in the men’s orchestra at Auschwitz,” says Ellen Rudolph, executive director of the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood. ¶ The museum recently opened “Violins of Hope,” which displays 19 violins from the Holocaust, including “The

Auschwitz Violin.”

“Almost all of the concentration camps had sanctioned orchestras that would play as work details marched in and out of the camps every day — and even as people were marched to their deaths in the death chambers,” Rudolph continues. “They welcomed — ‘welcomed’ (making air quotes) — people as they got off the trains, as they arrived at the camps, to, in some way, create the deception this could be sort of a civil place to be.”

To be clear, these were Jews playing the violins, she says, not German military men.

“They forced the Jewish prisoners to play them,” she says. “And, in fact, many, many survivors who played never wanted to touch the violins again after because they were basically forced to exploit their art to contribute to this hid-

eous deception.”

If there can be a silver lining to a story such as that one it is that some Jews forced to play the violin during World War II — be it at a concentration camp or for the entertainment of Nazi soldiers at events and social clubs — survived the period in which millions of Jews were killed, thanks largely to their musical abilities.

That helps to explain the title “Violins of Hope,” given by Amnon Weinstein, an Israeli violin maker who for two decades had been collecting and restoring these violins and others.

A second-generation violinmaker, Weinstein lost hundreds of relatives to the Holocaust, according to press materials from the Maltz Museum, and yet chooses to focus on the power music has even in the toughest of circumstances.

“It definitely was not arbitrary,” Rudolph says of the title. “It represents the whole concept that music did give these people hope that there could be life (beyond World War II).”

The violins in this collection have been played in concert halls around the world, which thrills Weinstein.

“When my violins are on stage, 6 million people are standing behind them,” he says in a Maltz Museum news release.

In Cleveland, “Violins of Hope” involves much more than the Maltz Museum showcase. it is a joint effort by seven cultural institutions: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Institute of Music, The Cleveland Orchestra, Facing History and Ourselves, Ideastream, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland and the Maltz Museum.

It began a few years ago, Rudolph says, when Richard Bogomolny, musical arts association chairman of The Cleveland

Anthony Gray “Violins of Hope” at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage presents many of the violins on display within a circular pod with accompanying stories of the violins' former owners.

Amnon & Avshalom Weinstein The ‘Heil Hitler’ Violin,” which has Nazi salute inscribed inside it, is one of two open violins on display in the exhibition.