Amnon Weinstein was working in his father Moshe’s workshop in Tel Aviv when a young man brought in a violin for repair with ashes inside its case.
It was the first time he had encountered a violin dated from the Holocaust. Finding and restoring objects like it soon became his life’s work, culminating in the Violins of Hope collection.
“It took me a long time to work with this violin, it scared me because I knew it was played on the way to the gas chamber, but I knew it must play again,” says Weinstein.
Weinstein and his father’s efforts to restore the culturally and historically significant objects are the subject of the play Stories from the Violins of Hope, which opens in Sydney at the end of the month.
At 83, Weinstein is still at work on the project with his son Avshalom.
He’s unable to make the journey from Israel to see the play about his life in Sydney, but says, “I am so happy that these stories are travelling all that way. After my father died I felt I had one choice and that was to have these instruments played. Violins cannot be left as furniture, they must have life and be the voice for those who lost theirs.”
Read the article by Siobhan Moylan in The Sydney Morning Herald.