Hello Mr. Weinstein.
Please see below a few words about my family history. I highlighted in bold letters the paragraphs more specific to the violin. I have very little precise information unfortunately.
I am also attaching 2 pictures of my father without a violin. These are the only ones in my possession just now. I may have others with a violin, but I will need to research deeper at my house to find them.
Family history :
Like many people with a similar history, I have very rarely spoken with my mother or my aunt about my father. The subject being omnipresent yet unutterable, and way too painful, with overwhelming emotion, lump in the throat and irrepressible tears.
The violins remained stored in a wardrobe for the longest time like a precious relic.
My father, Waldemar (Walter) BETTER, was born on 1st August 1898 in Zablocie Zywice, Poland. He was the son of Jakob BETTER and Adèle SCHLEZINGER. He had a sister, Ilona, born in 1907.
Jakob BETTER owned a shop selling bicycles, sewing machines and watches in Zywiec.
My aunt Ilona told me that the business began to take off after the Emperor François Joseph 1st came to the town. His watch had stopped working and his assistants couldn’t find a watchmaker capable of repairing it. They eventually found my grandfather who managed to fix it. Satisfied with his work the Emperor granted him a licence that made him an official supplier of the Imperial Palace.
Later Jakob BETTER settled in Vienna where he opened a jewellery shop on the square of the Great Cathedral Saint-Étienne.
My father served his military service in the Austrian army on the Eastern front against Russia. His commander appreciated him as a violinist to distract and entertain soldiers of his regiment during their rest. For this reason, he spared him the frontline combats.
In 1928 they left Austria for Paris. Jakob, Adèle, Walter, Ilona and her husband Edouard (who was my father’s best friend) opened 2 shops : a jewellery/watch shop called “Horlogerie Suisse” at 49, rue du Faubourg Montmartre – 9th arrondissement, close to the diamond merchants district of rue Cadet, and a jewellery purchasing office at 27, Boulevard des Italiens – 2nd arrondissement.
My father married my mother in Paris in 1934. My mother Gittel (Gusti) Liebermann was born in Wygodo Pocykow, Poland on 23rd August 1900. My mother’s whole family (9 children, 5 boys, 4 girls), very religious, fled Poland at the beginning of the war in 1914 for Frankfurt-Am-Main in Germany to escape the looming arrival of the Russians. My mother’s parents died in 1920. The children left Germany as early as 1st February 1933, taking advice from a friend. One of the 5 boys had died in the meantime. They all settled in Paris for a while. In the following years, 3 of the children would stay in Paris while the others left for Palestine, England, and the USA.
My father and mother, as well as one of her brothers and his family, left Paris shortly after the defeat in 1940 and found refuge in Nice. The area was occupied by the Italians. My aunt Ilona and her husband Edouard KRANZLER, together with my grandparents, fled to Mauvezin in Gers, approximately 50km West of Toulouse. My mother’s sister was in Pau with her family.
Thus, my father was arrested on 31st July 1944 by the French police in his apartment, upon denunciation. It is one of the very few things that my mother told me. 2 policemen rang relentlessly at the door before breaking through it. They arrested my father while my mother was holding me in her arms – I was 8 months old. She begged them not to take us while arguing that I was unwell. The policemen stepped out of the apartment to run some verifications, asking my mother to stand still and wait. This is when she escaped with me, I am unsure how, and succeeded to reach Mauvezin.
After his arrest on the 31st July 1944 in Nice, my father was taken to Drancy and later deported in convoy #77 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he died in October 1944.
I later learned from my aunt Ilona that my father played violin very often. He loved opera and concerts, but also fantasia music. I still own some of his 78rpm records, as well as thirty or so partitions of all styles, both classic and fantasia, that he bought in Paris and Nice. He played violin during all of my mother’s pregnancy, for my birth, and up until his arrest.
The mention on the label, if not too long, could be:
Waldemar BETTER, deceased in deportation in Auschwitz in 1944
If there is going to be an announcement note, we can write (but it is true of every violin so refurbished):
“Not only does the restoration of these violins give them a second life, it strikes a chord with my father’s soul too.”
Once again I would like to thank you very sincerely for your initiative and your determination.
Kindest regards,
Claude BETTER
