Playing Level: Exhibition only
Here’s the story as told by Moshe Amiran in Israel:
In 1972-75, I lived in Santiago, Chile, where I met with a man who survived the war and found shelter in Chile. He was about 60 years old, spoke broken Spanish typical to immigrants from Eastern Europe, and seemed rather lonely and poor. One day he asked me to buy his old violin. I visited his home where he showed me the number tattooed on his arm, but unfortunately, his name and address I don't remember. The man told me that the violin belonged to his grandfather who gave it to him in his childhood, and swore him to keep it no matter what. Which he did. In all his travels and troubles—he never parted with the instrument.
In 1942, he was sent to a labor camp and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, which he somehow survived with his violin. I paid him for his violin feeling that I’m doing a Mitzvah. As time went by, I put the violin away and forgot all about it. Three years later, I returned to Israel and discovered the violin inside one of my many crates. For a moment, I felt that the violin was following me so that one day—it could tell its sad history.
Many years later, when my grandchildren grew up, I remembered the violin lying in the attic and decided to bring it to a violin maker I had heard of, Amnon Weinstein in Tel Aviv. The rest is history, you may say. This violin does not play but allow me to be poetic and sentimental and say that—its silence is powerful, its silent strings touch hearts and it is an authentic tombstone to many unknown and nameless violinists who died lonely and forgotten.
This violin was given to us by…. It is not a ”real” violin. It wasn’t made by hand, but rather by using machines, and although it looks like a violin, it doesn’t produce any sound. This type of violin usually belonged to beggars who made believe they played, but actually sang the music.
