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.
