Amnon Weinstein and the Violins of Hope

Photos Lucille Reyboz © CR/Bluepress

THE VIOLINS OF HOPE: the search for lost violins

Some ten years ago, Amnon Weinstein, internationally renowned violin maker from Vilnius with a passion for the interaction of history and art, began his quest for violins that survived a war of indescribable horror. He wandered all over Europe, exploring remote markets, American army warehouses and municipality cellars. Some of the violins that Weinstein succeeded in retrieving date back to the beginning of the 19th century. They come from Klezmer families in central Europe, from Auschwitz, from the ghettos in Warsaw, from Jewish artisans in Poland, the Ukraine, or Russia… They were passed down from hand to hand, in turn shining in concert halls or dulled by the rain and cold of the streets, inspiring laughter and dancing at weddings or providing comfort at times of grief and suffering - violins that were companions of life throughout all its joys but also its sufferings.

Whether instruments of virtuosity or instruments of survival, almost all the violins retrieved were found completely destroyed. As driven by a magical force, Amnon Weinstein planed, glued, polished and varnished, and achieved an amazing result: 71 pieces of rare species of wood were transformed into violins, noble instrument par excellence.

It sometimes took Amnon Weinstein years to decipher the story of a violin. Some of the violins were to remain mute forever more… Others accepted to reveal their story, like the one that was found at the foot of a watchtower in Auschwitz, buried beneath barbed wire… a violin that belonged to a Jewish member of the men’s or women’s orchestra at Auschwitz and was retrieved by an American soldier who then deposited it in a military warehouse. Others are probably still hidden in houses in the Warsaw ghettos or the forests of central Europe.