After over a year in storage due to COVID, the Violins of Hope are now getting ready to play again. Here you can see the exhibition preparations.
For more info about VOH in Richmond, Virginia, go to https://violinsofhoperva.com/
The Sandor Fisher Violin is almost ready. Sandor and his wife both played violin in Auschwitz in WWII. Now I’m mostly working on the neck. In the past, it suffered from wood-boring insect damage, and you can still see the scars of old repairs. I respect the work that was done, and would like to preserve it. This is a fine French-made instrument. By the time I finish restoring it, it will play in concert halls all over the world as part of the Violins of Hope project. Hopefully it will premiere in Richmond Virginia this fall.
Working on the violin’s neck.
Right photo: wood-boring insect damage
When I opened the violin I got from Catherine from Brussels, I was surprised to find a little twig inside. In all my years of making and restoring violins, I’ve never seen anything like that. Tracing back the history of the instrument, I discovered that it belonged to a young anonymous Jewish violinist who rented a room with a Brussels family. When he ran out of money for rent he left his violin as a deposit. And unfortunately never came back for it. We can only imagine what happened to him during the war. The woman who donated the violin took some lessons as a kid, but decided to quit playing. When she did, she left a flower bouquet with the violin, and apparently part of it got into the violin itself.
I would like to restore the violin, so that it could be played on Violins of Hope concerts around the world.
This week I had an emotional visit of two brothers, Uri and Amos Barnea and their wives. They brought me the violin of their father Ziegbert who immigrated to Palestine in 1937. His parents, Berta and Alfred Bernheim were the owners of a big shopping center in Bavaria. The Nazis took over the shop and marched Berta and Alfred naked in the main street. Ziegbert left Germany and never stopped playing his violin. His parents survived the war, immigrated to Israel, and lived to an old age.
This is a handmade German violin, with many cracks and scratches. Now that I restored it, it will play again, for many years to come.
