Teaching History Matters

Violins of Hope. Train to Magdeburg tour of Israel, 2023.

We are in Jerusalem now, the City of God, after 22 hours of travel.

The last time I was here, I was studying at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in the summer of 2016. That is when liberating soldier Frank Towers left us.

I am here with filmmaker Mike Edwards, crew Joe Hammers and Josh Fronduti, scriptwriter Lee Shackleford and his wife Karen and my wife Laura. Our mission is to interview a dozen Holocaust survivors of the train near Magdeburg. We landed on Shabbat, the sabbath day morning. Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv was very quiet.

Returning impression of Jerusalem. Growing upward, the city of cranes. Busy.

Hotel Agripas in Jerusalem, a central location found for us by our friend Ellen, a fifteen-minute stroll from the Old City. My wife and I walked down the first day, made it to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  My third time, Laura’s first. She was moved to tears. Trapped in a procession of Eastern European pilgrims chanting prayers on the Via Dolorosa going the opposite direction. We wait for the Spirit to pass by, and we are back to our hotel for the transport to film at our first stop, the family behind the Violins of Hope project in Tel Aviv.

---

We arrive after an hour or so, greeted outside by nearly 84-year-old Amnon Weinstein at his ground level workshop. Joe and Josh set up the film shoot, as always, and we go across the street to meet his beautiful wife at an outdoor café. They are so happy to see us, Assi his wife is radiating goodness and love for the Americans who have come to tell a story of the Holocaust, passionate about history and life, the daughter of one of the famed Bielski partisans. She won’t let us pay or clear away the cups at the end.

We retire back at the shop, and Amnon begins to tell his story. The family emigrated to Palestine in 1938 from Poland, his father a violin maker, opening a shop right here in Tel Aviv when it was a brand new city, growing along the coast. As a boy, Amnon is puzzled one day in school when a teacher asks about families and grandparents; only one child in an elementary class of 35 has grandparents. He asks his mother; he remembers to this day the first shock of his life- when she wordlessly opens a book, directing the youngster’s attention to the graphic photos of the horrors of the Holocaust.

He became a master luthier, like his father, building and repairing violins for world class performers; he knows them all. Over time, though, survivors brought their violins, many German made fine specimens, and tell him that he must buy them, take them off their hands, or they will discard them. Many cannot bear to pick up the instrument that once brought them so much joy, after surviving the Holocaust, some even forced to play as train transports arrived at the camps, to add a false sense of comfort, for those about to be murdered. So he does acquire them-how can he not?-and others with a provenance of the Holocaust.

Mike asks how he feels when he plays, or sees others play these now restored instruments, the Violins of Hope. Amnon puts his hands on his shoulders. “I feel like I am carrying the weight, the music, telling in a way the stories of the six million. The violins are their voices speaking to us once more.” His son and third generation luthier Avi travels the world now showcasing the violins from the collection now numbers about 120.

He moves to his workbench, sometimes using his ‘stick’, his cane. “I am nearly eight-four. This is all I do now; I no longer build from scratch. It is important, and I think I can get the collection up to 140 or so pieces before I ‘move on’. I do not welcome death, but I think it is a natural progression”, he gestures with a wave of the hand.

We record him working, picking up many of the same carving knives I see in my own woodworking shop at home. I ask him about the wood, the sharpening of his tools. “At the bench I am 21 years old again. I get lost in the work for hours.”

He has summoned one of his young clients from across town, and Tamir arrives, a natural 21-year-old prodigy, a future virtuoso in training. We move to Amnon’s office. Amnon goes to the vault and brings out one of the prized restored Violins of Hope. Young Tamir begins to play. Amnon watches him contentedly from his desk. Mike asks Tamir to play Hatikvah (The Hope), now Israel’s national anthem. The 140-year-old violin of a victim is playing the 21-year-old soon to be master. “The violin is playing me.”

Amnon will admit to being concerned about the state of the world, the terrible war in Ukraine, the state of political turmoil in his own land where he has virtually lived the history of the state of Israel since before its birth in 1948, but now to the point of losing sleep at night, to the point of impatience and frustration. When asked to comment on the famous Benjamin photograph of the liberation of the train in the spring of 1945, he simply says, “And why did it take so long?” In hindsight, liberator Carrol Walsh had reached the same conclusion years before. Film director Mike points out, and the title of this blog points out, that education is the key. We hope that our film helps in some small way to heal the world, as Amnon’s Violins of Hope travel the world with the same mission, to remember the millions, and to hopefully help the world refocus its energies away from hate, war, persecution, destruction.

It has been a wonderful, emotionally draining day. We bid our new friends goodbye, and promise to carry on the mission.

We sit down with our first survivor tomorrow.