Published: 16 May 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
STEVE MEACHAM reports on an upcoming theatrical production in Sydney that combines stories of violins rescued from the camps with Jewish melodies played on a very special violin.
They are known as “the Violins of Hope” - precious instruments which are part of Holocaust history.
Most were rescued from the Nazi concentration camps, having been played to give spiritual succour to the poor souls disembarking from the railway cattle trucks or marching to the extermination shower blocks.
And they are the focal point of Lisa Rosenbaum and Rhonda Spinak’s play, Stories from the Violins of Hope, that will be staged by Moira Blumenthal Productions at Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion from May 31 to June 18.
The production will tell the stories of the violins and include performances by a violin-piano duo, who will play snippets of songs to highlight the text, and excerpts from Jewish prayers and niggunim (wordless melodies).
The violins are usually introduced by speakers and in program notes as instruments that have survived the Holocaust. No one had dramatised the story of the Violins of Hope themselves.
Lisa Rosenbaum, co-writer of the play
The music ranges from Jewish folk songs to classical music by Mendelssohn and Mozart that was played in the camps.
One of the stories describes Mozart being played by prisoner musicians at the gates of Auschwitz as the refugees were getting off the trains or walking to the gas chambers.
The play, which was originally commissioned to be premiered at the HK Baird Theatre in Los Angeles in 2020, had to be postponed because of Covid. A later, filmed version has been shown worldwide and at the United Nations in 2021 to commemorate Kristallnacht.
“I was commissioned to write a play about the renowned Violins of Hope in 2019, prior to their arrival for a concert tour of southern California,” Rosenbaum explains from her home in Los Angeles.
