Violins of Hope (20 page)

Today, Ernst's musical legacy lives on through three of his children: his daughter Liv, who grew up to become a piano professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music; his stepson Torleif Torgersen, a piano professor at the Grieg Academy in Bergen; and his son Ernst Simon Glaser, who is rapidly establishing a career as one of the finest cellists of his generation.

Ole Bull's Violin remains in the possession of the Oslo Philharmonic, where it is played by their current concertmaster. In 2007, the orchestra loaned the instrument to the Violins of Hope project for a performance by Shlomo Mintz. Amnon outfitted the violin with a new bridge and a new sound post while adjusting the entire instrument to suit Mintz's discerning tastes. The virtuoso played the renewed violin in a sold-out concert in Paris that marked the debut of the Violins of Hope.

 

 

O
n October 10, 1941, all of the Jews in the Romanian town of Gura Humorului, in the region of southern Bukovina, were ordered to appear in the town center. They were instructed to report to the train station by 2 p.m. that day, at which time they would surrender their valuables, money, and house keys. They would be permitted to bring with them only what they could carry, including bread and water.

The mandate could not have been more ominous. Romania's Jewish population—the third largest in Europe after Russia and Poland—had been maligned for centuries. Beginning in the late 1930s, the rise of Romanian fascism led to a renewed campaign of anti-Semitic regulations that robbed Jews of their citizenships, professions, property, and civil rights. The enactment of the Romanian equivalent of Nazi Germany's Nuremberg Laws was accompanied by a series of increasingly vicious attacks on the Jews.

The most notorious of these massacres took place in the eastern border town of Iaşi on June 28 and 29, 1941. In their attempts to rid Iaşi of its fifty thousand Jews, Romanian soldiers, policemen, and citizens joined German soldiers in hunting, robbing, and killing thousands of Jews. Those who survived were taken to the train station and packed into windowless freight cars. Although the railcars could only accommodate forty people, Romanian policemen and German soldiers used rifle butts and bayonets to force between eighty and two hundred Jews into each car. They nailed wooden boards over the small ventilation slots, depriving those trapped inside of much-needed fresh air as the stench of blood, urine, feces, and death grew increasingly unbearable with every passing hour.

The first of two death trains left Iaşi early in the morning of June 30, but did not reach its ultimate destination of Călăraşi—a mere 250 miles away—until July 6. Throughout their weeklong ordeal, the captives were given neither food nor water. Some of them grew so desperate for hydration that they drank their own urine or the blood from their injuries. Others tore their shirts into shreds, tied the strips together, and tossed the makeshift ropes into the mud puddles alongside the train tracks to sop up water. They were also not given the opportunity to leave the railcars to relieve themselves. On the few occasions when the freight car doors were opened, the survivors were only allowed to toss out the dead bodies. And there were many dead bodies. By the time the train reached Călăraşi, only 1,011 of the 2,530 Jews who had departed from Iaşi had survived. Most of the victims had died of dehydration, exhaustion, or suffocation as the train cars had baked in the summer heat. Others had been murdered by the guards or had committed suicide.

The second death train set out just a few hours after the first one, traveling so slowly that a guard was able to walk alongside it. Although it traveled for only one day, 1,194 of its 1,902 passengers had died by the time it reached its destination. Their deaths, combined with those who died on the first train and those who were murdered in the streets of Iaşi, made for a total of 14,850 Jewish casualties over a matter of days.

In the weeks that followed the Iaşi massacre, Romanian soldiers were joined by Romanian and Ukrainian peasants in a ruthless campaign to “cleanse the land” of its Jewish population. Jews throughout the country were robbed, brutalized, raped, and murdered by the thousands. By the end of 1941, between 45,000 and 60,000 Jewish men, women, and children would fall victim to the mass killings in the regions of Bessarabia and Bukovina. In Bukovina's capital of Czernowitz, two thousand Jews were murdered in just one day.

Romanian fascists were determined to kill or expel every Jew in the country. In addition to the mass murders, at least 155,000 Romanian Jews were marched toward the Dniester River, which formed Romania's eastern border. Across the river was a territory that Romania had recently annexed from the Soviet Union that was inhabited by a large number of Ukrainians. The Romanian government had dubbed the land on the other side of the Dniester “Transnistria,” because it was across from the river they called the Nistru. The Romanians had designated Transnistria as the ethnic dumping ground for their remaining Jews. The Jews would be marched into Transnistria and either subjected to more mass killings or simply left to die with no food, nor water, nor means to support themselves. By 1943, at least 105,000 of the Jews who were expelled to Transnistria would be dead. Another 115,000 to 180,000 Jews who had already been living in Transnistria would also die.

They did not know it at the time, but when the Jews of Gura Humorului were ordered to the train station on October 10, 1941, it was to begin their horrific journey to Transnistria. The first train from southern Bukovina had left the day before. By October 14, a total of 21,229 Jews from southern Bukovina would be deported, leaving behind only 179 Jews whose professional and medical knowledge was deemed essential.

When he heard the order to report to the train station, Feivel Wininger was gripped with fear. He and his elderly parents had already been forced to sell their home and land in nearby Vama for a pittance. They had moved into the home of Feivel's grandparents in Gura Humorului, where Feivel had gotten a job in a sawmill before this too had been taken away because he was Jewish. Since then, Feivel and the other Jews of southern Bukovina had been subjected to forced labor, incarcerations, curfews, and other restrictions on their movements. They had heard the terrible news from throughout Romania, not only of the massacres but also of the trains that had resulted in the deaths of thousands of Jews. The directive to appear at the train station signaled that the brutal anti-Semitic campaign had reached Gura Humorului.

Feivel hurried home to his wife Tzici and their sixteen-month-old daughter Helen. “There is no time for crying,” he quickly explained. “We have to leave in four hours.” He and Tzici frantically started packing, a task made difficult not only by their state of shock, but also by the fact that they did not know where they were going, how long the journey would last, or what was going to happen to them once they got there. They wrapped up a few days' worth of bread, sugar, and water, hoping that this would be enough to sustain them until they reached their unknown destination. They packed warm clothes to ward off the coming winter, smartly stitching some of their most expensive jewelry into the linings so they would not have to hand it over to the police.

After he was done packing, Feivel quickly gathered his family. With his mother, his uncle, and his daughter riding in a carriage they borrowed from a sympathetic neighbor, Feivel and his family walked to the train station, leaving everything else behind. There were still plates with food on them on the kitchen table. In his haste, Feivel even forgot his cherished violin.

On their way to the station, Feivel's family met up with many of the four thousand Jews who had been concentrated in Gura Humorului. Uncertain of their fates, everyone was struck with terror and struggling to carry their hastily packed suitcases. Little children were crying in the streets, following their parents with small bags in their hands. The elderly were leaning on canes and family members. The sick and injured had been brought from the hospital on stretchers. Everyone had been told that any Jew who failed to show up or who tried to escape would be shot.

The entrance to the train station was crowded and chaotic. While gentiles stood around celebrating the Jews' mistreatment and waiting to collect belongings that got left behind, Romanian soldiers herded the Jews toward cattle cars. There were desperate screams as the soldiers clubbed and beat the Jews, forcing them to quickly climb aboard. Feivel avoided being struck by the butt of a rifle by swiftly lifting his uncle and his mother into the car, handing Helen to Tzici, and then jumping in himself. They found a corner and sat on their suitcases.

The car quickly became overcrowded. “There is no more room in here!” Feivel shouted. “We'll all suffocate!” The soldiers just laughed and continued to shove people in with their belongings.

The doors were slammed shut and locked from the outside. Since all of the ventilation slots had been covered with boards, the captives were left in the dark. Just a little light peered in through the tiny gaps between the boards and the side of the car. Suddenly, they heard the roar of the engine and the squeal of the wheels as the train started moving. They were under way. The moans and cries of the cramped passengers were soon accompanied by the monotonous pounding of the train's wheels on the tracks. The unwilling travelers knew what had happened on the trains from Iaşi. They could not help but suspect that they would fall victim to the exact same fate.

The train crisscrossed Romania for three days. The passengers kept track of nightfall by the absence of light coming in through the slits in the wall, and daybreak by the return of the slim streams of sunlight. It was not long before the passengers exhausted their supplies of food and water. Many died of hunger, thirst, and suffocation. Although a bucket had been placed in one of the corners as a toilet, the car was too cramped for the passengers to access it. They had no choice but to urinate and defecate where they stood, filling the already stifling car with the stench of human waste.

Every twelve hours or so, the train would stop in the middle of nowhere and the doors would be opened loudly. The terrified passengers would be ordered to abandon all modesty and relieve themselves in open fields. Meanwhile, the bodies of those who had died would be thrown out of the cars. Local peasants would arrive to quickly strip the cadavers of expensive clothing. After only the briefest of reprieves, the soldiers would drive the deportees back into the cars. Those who were too weakened to climb back on board would be shot, as would anyone who tried to help them.

On the evening of October 13, the train stopped and the cattle car doors were flung open one last time. Romanian soldiers ordered the Jews out of the train and onto a swampy field that was littered with the corpses of previous deportees. The captives were told to line up and prepare for a long walk in the freezing wind and rain.

A large group of Ukrainian peasants appeared, offering to help the Jews carry their bags. Several gratefully handed over their luggage, only to watch as the Ukrainians walked away with them a few minutes later. Other belongings were abandoned on the train or on the landing after the Romanian soldiers announced that the deportees would be allowed to carry only a few bags with them. Feivel tossed aside all but three of his family's suitcases. He carried two of them while his ailing mother leaned against him for support. Feivel's seventy-year-old father carried the third suitcase, while Tzici carried Helen in her arms.

The Jews were taken on a difficult two-mile march to Ataki, a town on the banks of the Dniester River. It was raining and the road was slippery with mud and rocks. The Romanian soldiers continually pushed the exhausted and starving deportees to move faster and to take bigger steps, a task made especially difficult by the swampy conditions. Each step required a great amount of energy just to lift a foot out of the thick mud. Meanwhile, the soldiers kept driving the Jews forward with clubs, rifle butts, and the threats of bullets. Feivel's legs shook as he dragged his body forward, but he was determined to not stumble.

Ataki, once home to thousands of Jews, was a gutted shadow of its former self. The Jewish Quarter had been liquidated and then bombed into oblivion. All of the houses were burned down or in ruins. Only a few gutted walls and crumbling chimneys remained. Decomposing corpses were scattered in the muddy streets and in the cellars, or simply tossed into the trash. Thousands of dazed deportees wandered the streets, desperately looking for food. When they entered the abandoned homes, the refugees found broken furniture and blood everywhere—on the beds, on the walls, and on the floors. On the walls and doors they found messages written in blood. “Say Kaddish for us!” the haunting messages read in Yiddish, referring to the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead. “Do not forget us! Tell the world what happened here!”
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