Restored violins that survived Nazi concentration camps make Montreal debut

Master luthier ​Amnon Weinstein and his son Avshalom have spent years restoring violins that belonged to Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust.

"My mission is to get hold of any violin that has been rescued from the Holocaust, to repair it and to make it into a concert violin," said the elder Weinstein in a news release.

"I want these violins to be played, to have their voices heard and have their say, because these violins have a very particular sound: voices, weeping, laughter and prayers escape."

The Weinsteins have restored more than 70 string instruments in their shop in Israel, as part of a project they call Violins of Hope.

The violins have been touring Europe and the United States, and they make their Canadian debut at Place des Arts in Montreal on Saturday, Nov. 2.

'Emotional project'

Amnon Weinstein himself is a Holocaust survivor who lost many loved ones during the war

His son Avshalom told CBC that this undertaking has been "an emotional project."

For the Weinsteins, repairing string instruments is a vocation that's been passed down through the generations.

Avshalom said his father started training as a luthier in the 1960s, following in his own father's footsteps. Avshalom began to help out with the family business at the age of 18.

He described an instrument they worked on that had sustained a great deal of damage over the years.

"It was in pieces," he said. "We had to put it back together like a puzzle."

Despite the sorry state of some of the instruments, Avshalom said he and his father persisted.

"Almost everything is reparable. It only matters if you want to put the time, effort and the money."

The Weinsteins spent careful hours on each instrument, bringing back not just the violin's sound, but also preserving its history.

"Repairing it and knowing the actual history of where it was and in some cases, that it was played in camps, concentration camps and death camps, this was very different," said Avshalom.

The concert, under the director of Dutch conductor Vincent De Kort, will feature selections from Bach, Mendelssohn and Mahler, as well as the premiere of Children's War Diaries by Canadian composer Jaap Nico Hamburger.

"The Nazi officers forced prisoners in the death camps to play classical music," said Hamburger, "at the entrance of gas chambers — in order to trick arriving prisoners into thinking that it's not so bad."

His composition, Children's War Diaries, was inspired by a compilation of diaries of teenagers who were killed during the war, as well as by a visit to the Children's Memorial at Yad Vashem. 

Cantorial music will be performed by soprano Sharon Azrieli and tenor Gideon Zelermyer.

Violinist Monica Duchesne told CBC she is honoured to play one of the eight violins brought to Montreal for the concert.

"It's very emotional for us. For us to be able to have these instruments that survived such a terrible period of history when their owners didn't," she said. "It just shows the resilience."

The Violins of Hope will be played for the first time in Canada by musicians of the Orchestre Métropolitain at the Maison symphonique de Montréal at Place des Arts on Saturday, Nov. 2 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $45. The event is co-presented by the Montreal Holocaust Museum.