Throughout May and June, the Violins of Hope – a collection of Holocaust-related instruments restored by master violin maker Amnon Weinstein – will be featured in exhibitions and performances presented by the Minnesota JCC.
These instruments will not only appear on display as static witnesses to the atrocities of the Holocaust; in a testament to Jewish resilience and the power of music, musicians will play the meticulously refurbished violins in concerts across the Twin Cities.
The origins of violins can be traced to 16th-century Italy. Still, it became a quintessential part of Jewish culture, owing to its portability and relative low cost (convenient for the persecuted), and musical versatility (allowing for the expression of tremendous joy and sorrow).
Amnon Weinstein died in 2024, and his legacy lives on. He documented and helped the world to remember the poignant soundtrack of the Holocaust.
One day an older man entered Weinstein’s Tel Aviv shop with a violin in terrible condition that had not been played for years, explaining that he wanted it repaired so that his grandson could start lessons. Weinstein opened the instrument to see what he was dealing with – and discovered black powder inside.
The customer and his violin were survivors of Auschwitz, where ashes had accumulated as the man played music near the crematorium to comfort people as they were led into the gas chambers.
“They couldn’t pray,” Weinstein said in the documentary Amnon Weinstein & the Violins of Hope. “The violin prayed for them.”
Restoring violins owned by Jews and making their stories known became a life mission, one with poignant personal meaning.
Weinstein was born in Tel Aviv in 1939 and first apprenticed with his father, Moshe, before studying for years with master luthiers in Italy. Moshe was from Vilnius, then part of Poland, and left before the Holocaust. Most of his family perished in the Ponary forest, a mass murder site where Nazis and local collaborators killed 100,000 people, mostly Jews, in three years.
“My father, when he learned what happened to his family – how he lost about 400 people – he never spoke again about the Holocaust,” said Weinstein. “Never. When the war ended, my father was the head of the Vilna [Vilnius] Association in Israel, so many, many, of the new immigrants who survived and escaped, came to our house for their first day in Israel.”
These refugees brought their violins to Moshe, insisting that if he didn’t buy them, they would burn or destroy them. Moshe purchased them, viewing their destruction as sacrilege. Even so, they sat in storage. No one would buy these German- or Polish-made instruments, objects tainted with suffering.
The Nazis forced prisoners to play at the death camps for crowd control purposes, a macabre and eerie spectacle that prolonged and thus saved some musicians’ lives but left many too traumatized to perform again.
For decades, their violins were hidden away, silenced and in disrepair.
With reverence, dedication, and expertise, Amnon eventually began revitalizing the instruments, making sure that their last notes weren’t played under the most horrible of circumstances. Instead, these violins now travel the world to make beautiful music celebrated in freedom in Jewish and non-Jewish spaces.
Weinstein’s Minnesota Connection
Andy Fein is a local luthier who enjoyed a decades-long friendship with Amnon Weinstein. Sharing professions and sharp humor, the two connected at various conferences and contests around the world.
They kept in touch about their respective families, Jewish and world news – and collaborated professionally. Fein’s shop on Grand Avenue in St. Paul has featured instruments made by Weinstein.
“I visited Amnon in Tel Aviv and was able to hold some of the instruments,” Fein said, referring to the Violins of Hope. “One that meant a lot to me belonged to someone who was able to preserve it by pushing it through the bars of a train car window on the way to the camps.”
With the utmost respect for Weinstein as a person and violinmaker, Fein said it’s very meaningful for the Violins of Hope to come to Minnesota. “Amnon would love this, too,” he added.
Fein keeps in touch with Amnon’s son, Avshalom (Avshi) Weinstein, now an esteemed third-generation luthier in his own right, who worked with his father on the Violins of Hope and now manages the program. He will travel to the Twin Cities for the exhibition.
“I hope that people will come to more than one event because each one is going to be different – and that they enjoy and learn something,” Avshi said from his home in Istanbul.
The endeavor has special meaning to Avshi in this period of increasing hostility towards Jews worldwide.
“I wish for people not to forget, and that they talk to kids and make sure they understand what happened in the past and what should go on in the future.” What should go on? “A bit more tolerance. We have to start somewhere.”
Interviewed together in a video call, Fein and Avshi exchanged quips about whether they were looking forward to seeing each other again.
“Not so sure,” Avshi said dryly.
“Same irreverent humor as his father,” Fein observed.
They both agree that Amnon’s spirit will be felt when the Violins of Hope come to Minnesota, and about the critical importance of the project.
Fein remembered: “Amnon said more than once, ‘The Nazis tried to silence us. This is a way to show that we won’t be silenced.’”