A professor of musicology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, James A. Grymes is also the author of Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust—Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour. The book shares the diverse and moving narratives behind a few of the instruments master violinmaker Amnon Weinstein has restored. Weinstein believes that these violins, many of which have been played on concert stages around the world, give voice to voiceless—speaking for those who were silenced in the Holocaust. Nineteen violins—18 from Weinstein’s collection and one making its American debut on loan from Yad Vashem, the World Center for Documentation, Research, Education and Commemoration of the Holocaust —are currently on view at the Maltz Museum. Grymes served as consulting curator for the 4,000-square-foot multi-sensory exhibition and we asked him a few questions about his book when he was in town for its opening.
How did you get involved with the Weinsteins and the Violins of Hope?
I am a faculty member at the University of North Carolina and in 2012 we brought some of the Violins of Hope to Charlotte. That was the first time—and up until now the only time—those violins had been on display in the western hemisphere. Like the effort in Cleveland, the project involved fundraising and years of putting partnerships together and plans in place. In that preparation, I kept hearing stories behind these instruments and found them really interesting. I took a trip to Israel to visit Amnon’s workshop to learn more about his personal story and see the violins. As a historian and a musician myself, I was really moved by that experience and went on to write the book, Violins of Hope.
What instrument do you play?
Well, I should tell you now that I am neither Jewish nor a violinist. One of my Master’s degrees is in bassoon performance. As a musician it is really an inspiration to see how people used music to save their lives and to save the lives of their families.
I imagine that some of the violins came to Amnon with a story, but not all of them were complete. What was the most difficult part of your research?
That changed from violin to violin. Each violin did come with a story, but [they were complete] to varying degrees. Take the Motele violin, for example. Uncle Misha, the partisan leader who had more or less adopted Motele, wrote a biography about him in Yiddish shortly after the war. So that was more of a matter of getting the biography translated and filling in some of the historical record around the story. From a research perspective, that was an easier chapter to write. Other stories, like that of Erich Weininger took considerably more unpacking. He had spoken very little to his son about his Holocaust experience. Like many survivors, that wasn’t something he didn’t want to share and he didn’t want to think about and relive. So, the violin came to Amnon with maybe 500 words that encapsulated what the son knew about his father’s experience. I had to look at the historical record and trace where his father was and then find biographies and stories of others who had been in those same places at the same time in order to reconstruct Weininger’s journey.
Reading Violins of Hope helps to contextualize the events and stories. Can you talk about that?
I think one of the lessons for me—and something I hope readers will take away from the book—is that there was wide breadth of experiences. If you were taught the Holocaust like I was, you were presented with sort of a sanitized version. It was whittled down into a synopsis that could fit into, say, a fourth grader’s history textbook. It was a monolithic view of events. In reality, there was no single experience. The six stories I tell in the book couldn’t be any more different from each other. These Violins of Hope are poignant reminders that the Holocaust is not one story of six million deaths, but six million individual stories.
What is one story that resonates for you particularly?
Each is inspiring and difficult in its own way. For me the most emotional to write about was Feivel Wininger’s violin. He was taken on a death march through the rain and the snow in Romania. On the march both his uncle and his mother died and he had an 18-month-old daughter named Helen who was slowly starving. She became smaller and weaker until she lost the strength to even cry. When I was writing that chapter I couldn’t help but think of my own daughter, Helen, because they shared the same name and would have been the exact same age at the time. I couldn’t imagine what that would have been like to watch your own daughter approach death. Luckily, Feivel was able to get his hands on a violin. He played in exchange for food and firewood. That violin saved his life and the lives of people in his family, including Helen. I had the opportunity to meet her. She is in Israel now. It was a really inspirational voyage.
What do you think people get from experiencing the exhibition we have created here?
I think it is a very emotional experience. The instruments are beautiful museum pieces in their own right but the fact that they come alive through their stories and their performances here and throughout Cleveland underscores the point that these instruments survived. Music survives. Culture survives.
Grymes’ book is available in our Museum Store. For more information on the Violins of Hope exhibition and the other lectures, films, concerts, plays and other programs taking place as a part of three-month community-wide collaboration, visit violinsofhopecle.org.
—Sam Fryberger, Director of Marketing & Communications
