Violins of Hope (5 page)

For the initial screenings of musicians from Warsaw, Huberman turned to Jacob Surowicz, a violinist in the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. At first, Surowicz assumed that Huberman was interested in his orchestra's section members. He asked whether the very best musicians in his orchestra should also audition for the Palestine Orchestra. Huberman smiled and responded, “not also, but
only
the very best musicians should apply.”
¹⁷
Huberman was committed to establishing an ensemble that would rival the top two or three orchestras in Europe. Surowicz himself ended up joining the Palestine Orchestra, along with six of his colleagues from the Warsaw Philharmonic.

Instead of waiting for Huberman to come to them, several musicians traveled to Palestine in the hopes of auditioning for him there. Not knowing Huberman's travel schedule, they arrived on tourist visas that sometimes expired before they had the chance to meet him. To them, it was well worth the risk. A successful audition carried with it the promise of a permanent visa. During Huberman's successful tour of Palestine in December 1935, musicians waited for him in hotel lobbies, hoping for auditions. Although Huberman's schedule was already full, he made time to hear them all.

The Palestine Orchestra provided a safe haven for musicians who were already planning on leaving Europe, as well as for a few performers who otherwise may have never considered emigrating. Eighteen-year-old Hungarian violinist Lorand Fenyves did not even know what he was auditioning for when his teacher Jenő Hubay told him to play for Huberman. Several days later, Fenyves received a telegram from Huberman instructing him to be ready to leave for Palestine within a week. Fenyves's parents wanted him to honor the contract he had already signed to become the concertmaster of the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden, but conductor Felix Weingartner convinced him to not pass up the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play with the best Jewish performers from Europe under Toscanini's baton. Lorand's sister Alice Fenyves came with him to Palestine, joining the orchestra's viola section.

Although Huberman was not able to attract every musician he wanted to join his orchestra, the performing backgrounds of those he was able to recruit were remarkable. Of the seventy musicians who are listed in the orchestra's first program, fifty-two had once been members of leading orchestras such as the Budapest Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Vienna Concert Orchestra, and Warsaw Philharmonic. Of those fifty-two, an impressive thirty had held leadership positions in their orchestras. The final roster of musicians would include performers from Argentina, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, the United States, and Yugoslavia. Huberman was creating not just an orchestra of exiles, but an orchestra of all-stars.

Huberman was also aware that he was doing more than just building a world-class orchestra. He was saving lives. When the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem expressed concern about the long-term viability of the orchestra, Huberman countered by outlining a rationale for bringing musicians to Palestine under any economic circumstances. “Why should we dread to think of that future when the present state of about fifty musicians (out of the seventy-five to compose the orchestra) is right now worse off in Germany and Poland than we could imagine them at the worst in Palestine?” he asked.
¹⁸

Once the musicians had been recruited, all that was left was to secure immigration visas for the orchestra members and their families. This turned out to be much more difficult than Huberman had anticipated. It also proved to be the most important thing he accomplished.

Jewish immigration to Palestine had been on the rise ever since the British government—which had controlled the territory since 1917—had issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917. This was the document that confirmed England's support for the establishment of a national home for Jews in Palestine. In the 1920s, the British had issued unlimited immigration visas to Zionists from all over Europe, as well as to Jews fleeing persecution in Poland and Russia.

By 1929 tensions between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine had escalated into Arab attacks on Jews and Jewish property. England had responded with the Passfield White Paper of 1930, which had called for a limit to Jewish immigration. Since then, the British government had scaled back the number of visas it allocated to the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the organization responsible for coordinating Jewish immigration. The Jewish Agency was forced to adopt a selective policy that carefully scrutinized every candidate for immigration, including the musicians who were coming to Palestine for Huberman's orchestra.

Had the musicians been wealthy, there would not have been any problems with securing visas. The Jewish Agency was granting unlimited visas to “capitalists” who owned assets totaling at least 1,000 Palestinian pounds. At the time, this was equivalent to approximately 20,000 reichsmarks—a good deal of money considering that members of the Berlin Culture League were only making around 200 reichsmarks a month. Huberman was well aware that musicians were unlikely to have that kind of money. He quickly dismissed the capitalist certificates as an option. He preferred to find a solution that would not cause financial difficulties for members of the orchestra. He was specifically interested in workers certificates, which allowed their holders to also bring their spouses and underage children.

In the absence of potential applicants who would qualify as capitalists, the Jewish Agency only agreed to offer the musicians visas for one year. The agency believed that the performers would not want to stay in the country for very long. They preferred to award the few permanent visas they had been allocated to workers who would be more likely to settle in Palestine. This was another plan that Huberman found to be unacceptable. He insisted that he could not ask musicians to leave their jobs and homes in Europe and move their families and belongings to Palestine without securing full immigration rights. To make matters worse, a temporary visa would require the musicians to pay customs charges on their families' furniture. If this was the only option, Huberman threatened, then he would not proceed any further with his plans to establish an orchestra.

Throughout the process of securing immigration visas for the musicians, Huberman was always careful to look out for their families. When Polish musicians were struggling to cover the cost of moving their families, Huberman arranged for the orchestra to pay for half of the travel expenses of their wives and children. Those who could not afford to pay the other half of the expenses would receive it from the orchestra as an advance. Knowing that the initial costs of moving were the greatest, Huberman deducted the advance from the musician's salary in ten monthly installments, starting with the third month of employment. Musicians with children even received an increase in salary of half a pound per child every month.

While Huberman was struggling to find an answer to the visa problem, another development threatened to put an end to his plans: the escalation of the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine. Another Arab revolt had begun on April 21, 1936, after six rival Arab leaders had come together to rally against the continuation of mass Jewish immigration. A general strike and a boycott of Jewish businesses quickly intensified into a severe economic and political crisis, as well as bloody attacks on the Jews and the British. The British authorities responded by further restricting the number of visas they would issue for the remainder of the year and by calling in military reinforcements from Egypt and Malta.

Concerned about bringing musicians to Palestine in the middle of a civil war, Huberman had no choice but to delay the orchestra's first concert. After learning that Arab unrest tended to subside in November, when the Arabs had to return to work for the beginning of the orange-picking season, Huberman postponed the inaugural performance from October 24 to December 26. The first rehearsal was also delayed for two months, from early September to early November.

In the meantime, the Jewish Agency continued to propose solutions to the problem of immigration visas. One idea was to offer temporary visas that were valid for two years instead of one, but Huberman again insisted on permanent visas. Another suggestion was to admit the musicians as “small capitalists” whose instruments would be accepted as proof that they owned assets worth at least 250 Palestinian pounds (5,000 reichsmarks). Huberman rejected this as well, since some musicians did not possess their own instruments. Those who did would not be able to pretend that their instruments were anywhere near that valuable.

Failure was not an option. As Huberman explained to Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization and the future first president of Israel, an inability to help the musicians immigrate would not just embarrass the Zionist community but would hand the Nazis an unexpected victory.

It was not until August 11, after the British high commissioner for Palestine intervened on Huberman's behalf, that the Immigration Office announced that the Jewish Agency would receive forty visas specifically earmarked for musicians of Huberman's choosing, along with those musicians' wives and children. By the end of the month, the British authorities would also approve visas for the parents and siblings of members of the orchestra. Additionally, workers visas were granted to musicians' adult children over the course of September. Once Huberman exceeded his allocation of forty permanent visas, he completed the orchestra with musicians on one-year visas that were converted into permanent visas in the following year.

The significance of solving the immigration problem cannot be understated. Through his uncompromising dedication, Huberman had saved an entire orchestra of musicians and their families from Nazi tyranny. Without his help, they may have never been able to leave Europe. The vast majority of them might very well have died in the Holocaust.

Although the musicians had been guaranteed their visas, it was still not clear when they would arrive in Palestine. Rumors were rampant in the summer of 1936 that the British were going to capitulate to Arab demands that all Jewish immigration be suspended. This prompted Zionist offices throughout Europe to start urging all prospective immigrants to leave immediately. Huberman considered asking the musicians to move up their arrival dates to early September, but this would have created a financial crisis. The musicians would not have been able to support themselves and their families without getting paid for the two months prior to the first rehearsals. Once again, the high commissioner came to Huberman's defense by promising him that the musicians would be able to immigrate in October regardless of any changes to England's overall immigration policies.

All of this uncertainty caused a great amount of confusion and anxiety among the musicians. Erich Toeplitz had yet to receive a contract on July 15, 1936, when he received a letter from Huberman announcing that the first rehearsals and performance had been postponed by two months. Two weeks later, another letter inquired whether it would be possible for Toeplitz to leave prior to November 1. One week after that, a third letter informed Toeplitz that there was no need to arrive early, after all. It was not until September 1 that a contract was sent.

Toeplitz finally arrived at the Palestinian port of Haifa on November 2, along with ten other musicians from Austria and Germany. They had sailed aboard the SS
Tel Aviv
, which was making its final journey from Italy to Palestine. Like so many other Jewish enterprises during that time, the Palestine Shipping Company, which owned the ocean liner, had proved to be a failed venture. At least the trip had been a success. During the voyage, many of the musicians had come together for a benefit concert for the Jewish National Fund, which financed the purchase of land in Palestine.

At Haifa, the musicians boarded a bus to Tel Aviv, which was no easy journey in those days. Since there was no direct road along the coast from Haifa to Tel Aviv, the bus had to travel through the Arab-controlled West Bank. Their journey had already been delayed for two months by the Arab revolt. Now they were heading into Arab territory during a general strike. The Arabs were protesting the signing of the Balfour Declaration exactly nineteen years earlier. To the musicians who were accustomed to the cosmopolitan atmosphere of European capitals, even the desolate, rocky landscape across which the bus traveled seemed hostile.

When the musicians reached Tel Aviv, everything changed. After living in constant fear in Europe and traveling through the unwelcoming West Bank, they gazed at the blooming citrus groves and the young people strolling leisurely through the streets. The disparity in the landscape reminded the musicians of how far the Jewish community in Palestine had come in such a short time. It was in this same pioneering spirit that Huberman had established a major symphony orchestra in less than three years.

In addition to quickly familiarizing themselves with a new location with tropical weather and exotic food, the musicians had to acclimate to each other in a very short period of time. Every orchestra has a distinct sound that allows careful listeners to distinguish one ensemble from the others. When a new musician joins an orchestra, he or she has to quickly adapt to the practices of the existing ensemble to blend into that sound. In this case, the entire orchestra was composed of musicians from different countries, with dissimilar educational backgrounds, who had never played together before, and who did not even speak a common language. It was no easy task to achieve a uniform sound in the weeks prior to Toscanini's arrival.

At first the orchestra rehearsed in smaller sections: strings, woodwinds, and brass. This allowed the individual instrument families to establish their own sounds. It also gave the city of Tel Aviv the time it needed to complete their concert hall. The presence of a professional symphony orchestra and the appearance of superstar conductor Arturo Toscanini required a stage and a seating capacity larger than had ever existed in Palestine. To accommodate this demand, the 1,500-seat exhibition hall in which Huberman had performed in December 1935 was combined with an adjacent hall to form one concert hall that could seat 2,500 audience members. The creation of such a hall in such a short time span represented yet another testimony to the passion and resourcefulness of the Jewish community.