Violins of Hope Quotes

“He closed his eyes and started playing. The music transported him to a different place, to a different time. He was no longer in the ghetto. He was not hungry, he was not soaking wet, and he was not wearing shabby rags. He was the richest man in the world.”
― James A. Grymes, Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust-Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour

“It was during this time that Ernst began to rediscover his Jewish heritage. Like many German Jews of the early twentieth century, he and his parents had always thought of themselves exclusively as German and had given little thought to Judaism. But Ernst became compelled to explore the language and traditions of his ancestors by his experiences during the Holocaust, as well as through the deep connection that he forged with Levin, who had been a devout Jew his entire life.”
― James A. Grymes, Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust-Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour

“Of the 762 Jews deported from Norway, all but twenty-three died in German concentration camps.”
― James A. Grymes, Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust-Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour

“There 186 able-bodied men were put to work in Birkenau and Auschwitz III, while 346 women, children, and elderly people were sent directly to the gas chambers.”
― James A. Grymes, Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust-Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour

“More important to the orchestra members than their relationships with camp functionaries was the way in which music forged personal connections with their SS captors, whom they called “esmen.” “When an esman listened to music, especially of the kind he really liked, he somehow became strangely similar to a human being. His voice lost its typical harshness, he suddenly acquired an easy manner, and one could talk with him almost as an equal to another,” Szymon wrote in his memoirs. “Sometimes one got the impression that some melody stirred in him the memory of his dear ones, a girlfriend whom he had not seen for a long time, and then his eyes got misty with something that gave the illusion of human tears. At such moments the hope stirred in us that maybe everything was not lost after all.” The irony of such barbarians having so much appreciation for beauty was not lost on Szymon: “Could people who love music to this extent, people who can cry when they hear it, be at the same time capable of committing so many atrocities on the rest of humanity?”49”
― James A. Grymes, Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust-Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour

“But the ensemble’s greatest legacy can be found in the lives it saved during the Holocaust. By helping the musicians as well as their family members immigrate to Palestine, Huberman saved an estimated one thousand lives between 1935 and 1939. The”
― James A. Grymes, Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust-Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour