Two dozen violins that were played by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust are now on display at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee on the Lower East Side.
They’re part of an exhibition called Violins of Hope: Strings of Jewish Resistance and Resilience.
Violins of Hope is an international project of concerts based on a private collection of violins, violas and cellos, all collected since the end of World War II.
One of the first things you see as you walk past the welcome desk at Jewish Museum Milwaukee is a curved wall panel. It’s adorned with a vibrant blue illustration of hands playing a violin.
The curves of the walls are meant to represent the shape of a violin. When you follow them, you’re led into the first room of the show, where a quote in bold letters on the wall explains the inspiration behind the project.
“We really anchored the entire exhibition in this quote,” says Samantha Abramson, co-curator of the exhibition and executive director of the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center in Milwaukee.
The quote reads: "To those who play and even those who listen, the violin has a neshama (the Hebrew word for soul). So, what do we do when the musicians have long since passed, but their instruments remain? Our work embodies the spirit of Israel and the soul of the Jewish people."
Violins of Hope was founded by Amnon Weinstein. He grew up repairing instruments with his father, who was a luthier, an expert in repairing and creating musical instruments, especially stringed instruments.
In the 1990s, Weinstein began to restore violins connected to the Holocaust. He would later exhibit them and share them with the world through the Violins of Hope project.
"Amnon really felt it was an assault on humanity to destroy a musical instrument, so he accepted these instruments into his collection. And that kept growing and growing over time and sometimes he was able to buy violins that someone didn’t want or wanted to sell ... there are over 100 of these instruments. So, we have 24 in this collection," Abramson says.
Weinstein trained his son Avshalom as a luthier, and he later joined the work in preserving the violins and their owners’ stories.
Michael Morris is community engagement coordinator at the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center.
He shared what’s known about one of the violins on display. It’s inside a clear case. The violin is lying on top of rocks, next to a fragment of a railroad track.
Morris says the violin was recovered in Lyon, France, as its owner was taken by train to a concentration camp.
"It was thrown out of a train of a box car and a railway worker in Lyon, France heard someone say, essentially, 'Take my violin so it can live because where I’m going, I won’t survive.' And so, it stayed with the family. When they learned about the Violins of Hope collection, they knew that that was the proper home for this violin," Morris says.
Some of the violins on display were owned by professionals and some were owned by people who just enjoyed playing.
Flip panels with questions and answers can be spotted throughout the exhibition. Some panels explain what a luthier is. Others share what instruments are in bands that play klezmer music.
There’s also a music room where guests can hold and play a violin — not from the restored collection — while following a video tutorial from a Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra student.
Samantha Abramson says museum visitors will notice that the 24 violins from before and during the Holocaust era are in various conditions.
And there could be any reason for that. She says they may not have been taken care of. Or perhaps they were exposed to brutal conditions, such as when Jews were forced to play in the rain at concentration camps for the amusement of Nazi soldiers.
Abramson says by telling the stories of the violins and the people who played them, the exhibition strives to show what was lost when Adolph Hitler, his Nazis and their collaborators killed 6 million Jews.
"When we talk about Jews and music, it has always been part of our prayer, part of our identity, and we wanted to really celebrate that in this exhibit, even though we’re also talking about genocide and destruction," Abramson says.
Abramson hopes people, especially students, who view the collection feel inspired by the violins and their stories to stand against hatred when they see it.
The Milwaukee exhibition is the educational centerpiece of the Violins of Hope – Wisconsin Residency, led by the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra.
Its Senior Symphony musicians will play some of the restored instruments in a concert November 16.
