A special two-week Holocaust commemoration begins Sunday. The project focuses on the instruments played and owned by survivors, as well as their stories.
It was spearheaded locally by the Jewish Federation of Fort Wayne and Pearl Arts.
At the heart of the commemoration is a photographic exhibition called Violins and Hope: From the Holocaust to Symphony Hall, created by Cleveland photographer Daniel Levin.
It will be on display in the Weatherhead Gallery at the Rolland Art Center, located at the University of Saint Francis from March 11-23.
WBOI’s Julia Meek discusses the scope and impact of the project with the Jewish Federation’s Executive Director, Michael Theise and Pearl Arts Executive Director, Jim Palermo.
The Violins and Hope Commemoration events take place between Sunday and March 21.
You can find detailed information and a complete listing of events at the Violins and Hope Fort Wayne website.
Here is a transcript of our conversation:
Julia Meek: Michael Theise, Jim Palermo, welcome.
Jim Palermo: Thank you.
Michael Theise: Thank you.
Julia Meek: You are gearing up for two big weeks of activities commemorating hope, peace and remembrance of Holocaust victims and survivors. What a powerful, powerful undertaking, so, let's start with why here and now is this vital?
Michael Theise: Well, the Fort Wayne community was blessed to experience Violins of Hope five years ago, 2019. The powerful message was well received, and to keep memories alive, we wanted to continue and turn that into a tradition.
Julia Meek: So, sharing this message through art and music, powerful communication tools, you have 11 very special events going on. Exactly how and why did you choose what to include for such an important commemoration, Jim?
Jim Palermo: Last time, we had 30 partners, it was a massive undertaking. We had about 80,000 people experience events. This time, we're not as large, and we're trying to fill in around the gaps from last time.
So, we'll actually screen two documentaries over these two weeks. We'll have a book talk with an author named Tod Lending, who just wrote a book called The Umbrella Maker's Son, all to do with music in the Holocaust. Some of these events were sure-fire winners the last time. Some of them are brand new.
It's slightly different from the last time, but complementary. So we wanted to come out of the gate with some really wonderful programming. But all of it really, Julia, is meant to support the art exhibition of these magnificent photographs at University of St Francis.
Julia Meek: You are really multimedia all the way with this one. Was it difficult to only choose this 11?
Jim Palermo: We had a certain amount of time, we had a certain number of resources, and we just were pretty focused on what could happen. Some of it is serendipity. Some things work out. Other things just land in your lap.
You know, that's the way programming goes, and it has to make sense with the overarching goal that we're trying to achieve. And so, this happened over the period of about nine months. The programming really settled in, and some of it was only settled a few weeks ago.
Julia Meek: Okay, it's an epic story that you're telling, Michael. What's the significance of these components that you've chosen to share? What makes them really integral to the story.
Michael Theise: Well, Julia, what we have now, in addition to the violins that were featured so prominently five years ago, again, we have the violins, smaller number now, and instruments.
The photographic exhibition, I think, is going to tie so much more of the story together. We have detailed pictures exhibits, stories of the family that took personal care of these instruments to repair them. We have the story that Daniel Levin put together, his documentation of all of this.
And then the other piece is that the photographic exhibition will resonate very powerfully with the community, with students in particular, who have also provided remarkable artwork to go along with this.
Julia Meek: And you are utilizing six different spaces and settings to tell this story. What sort of planning did this entail? What does it add to the impact of the commemoration at the same time, do you think?
Jim Palermo: All of the programming that happens outside of the exhibition is all meant to support the exhibition. So, imagine there are all these people with violins after the Second World War. They don't know what to do with them.
They have painful memories associated with playing these in concentration camps, or they lost relatives who played the instruments, or they buried them in the backyard until the Nazis were out of power. The stories are unbelievable.
They all found their way to this man in Israel, in Tel Aviv, who decided to put them on a shelf. He knew he couldn't sell them. He knew he had to restore them. He came up with this project, and now they're touring all over the world. So, the exhibition's called From the Holocaust to Symphony Hall.
Julia Meek: It's intriguing all in itself, then. And Jim, you've spent a lot of your life coordinating music events. From that particular perspective, seriously, what can these offerings add to the overall scope of this project of telling this story, a picture's worth 1000 words and a violin of hope is really something.
Jim Palermo: Well, every event has something to do with this topic, but it comes from a different direction. So you have the Philharmonic Youth Orchestras performing a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War, music that's very much aligned to that era.
Then you have a documentary about Holocaust survivors who were musicians, and go back to Poland, where they grew up, very painful process, but very healing for them as well. Then you have a book talk from an author about something related to that documentary.
You have a prayer service, a Jewish Catholic prayer service with the actual instruments. So everything goes back to that exhibition, and the photos that you will see at the exhibition. Everything sort of touches back to that so, it's really powerful.
Julia Meek: Monumentally so. Now our community was able to commemorate the story and the debut of those amazing violins in 2019. What kind of an impact has the exhibit made on the rest of the world since then?
Michael Theise: Well, Violins of Hope shared with the world how transformative, how powerful music and art and commitment from those who restored the instruments to the professionals that played the instruments.
I think Violins of Hope, again, the earlier programming, really laid the groundwork for what communities can do next stage. Like Fort Wayne is leading up with Violins and Hope, smaller scale, as Jim mentioned, but just as powerful, very welcoming for the community, very accessible.
Jim Palermo: After the Violins of Hope in 2019 it was so successful that the family that owns and operates the project had subsequent communities call us to ask how we did it.
And so Fort Wayne emerged as a community that really mounted a very successful project. So, we've talked to dozens of people all over the United States, and it's fun to talk to them and tell them about what we did, because we get to relive it. And every community mounts this in its own way.
The project has just funneled out and become extremely successful. The piece of it that we did not do last time was the photographic exhibition, and so that's why we decided this time to bring those photos.
Julia Meek: We have full circle, which is very special. And Michael, you missed it here last time because you took the position as director of the Jewish Federation here in town just six months ago. So, glad you could make it for round two! What does it mean to you to know that you were walking in on this and now to have it almost happening?
Michael Theise: Well, Julia, interestingly, in 2019, in the spring, I was able to see a Violins of Hope commemoration in Cleveland, Ohio, where things were centered primarily in one key location.
Then to have learned what took place in Fort Wayne, where the beauty, the art, the talents were spread across many venues, just gave me a whole new perspective of a smaller community, both pulling and pooling together to provide a most beautiful commemoration that lasted two weeks.
Julia Meek: Really, really something. And can you ever get used to literally, such an amazing presentation, the art and the music together, those Violins of Hope?
Jim Palermo: It's interesting. The instruments themselves vary in quality. You have to understand that many of the people who performed on these instruments in the 1920s, 30s and 40s were amateurs, and so some of these instruments are practice instruments.
I'll never forget, when we did this five years ago, there was a prominent member of the Philharmonic who's a member of the Jewish community, and we were talking about the quality of the instruments, they varied. And she said, the quality of the instrument is not the story.
It's really the least important part of the story. The impact of these instruments, what they've been through, the stories they tell, that's where this commemoration comes alive.
Julia Meek: And it resonates.
Jim Palermo: It resonates with everyone. We were so shocked. We would have an event on a Saturday afternoon at one o'clock, and we thought, wow, it's gonna be hard to get an audience there. And you know, 300 people would show up, and we'd have to add chairs on the stage.
But what was most curious to me was that people wanted to touch the instruments. They wanted to touch history. They wanted to connect somehow to the people who own the instruments, whose stories we were telling. And that's what's powerful. They actually touch something that's a part of history.
Julia Meek: And as things roll out this year, who do you hope to see at these various events? The whole community is welcome. Are we going to see the whole community there?
Michael Theise: I am sure we will see the whole community. Word is out. Memories from 2019 are still strong. People have seen Violins of Hope and similar activities in other communities as they travel.
And now this is a destination certainly worth coming to, a commemoration certainly worth coming to. I think the Fort Wayne area schools have done just a phenomenal job with their education and awareness of Holocaust materials, and I think that filters up to parents and guardians, to siblings.
Universities have done a nice job with sharing what will be coming. So, yes, I think we're going to see the full breadth of the community,
Julia Meek: And as we focus on this historic remembrance, hope and peace are timely topics world round, right here, right now, in this difficult year. How does this amplify the importance of your cause?
Jim Palermo: Well, it's really interesting. We had a lot of discussions as a committee when we decided to mount this because of October 7. And we are firmly committed to separating political differences between people today in 2025, with what happened to these people.
We would be dishonoring those people by trying to liken anything we're doing to anything that's current. These are people who lived before Israel was even a country. They were living in that territory then, or mostly in Europe.
And so, we are telling the stories of people who had a very unique life and death experience that transcends anything that we're talking about today. And so, this is about music. It's about transcendence, and it's about a commemoration for people who suffered incredibly at the hands of the Nazis.
Julia Meek: Now, more than ever before, is it vital? Does it speak even more volumes?
Jim Palermo: I think this commemoration, for anyone who approaches it with an open mind, it allows them to understand that the humanity of the people is what counts. The music tells the story. T
hese artistic and cultural experiences allow us to come together, and we can be united. We can be a Democrat or Republican or be from whatever country, but we come together to pay homage to these people who went through so much, and that's what this commemoration is about.
Michael Theise: Julia, I think Jim hit it right on the head. I would say that, you know, participants are going to see musicians, they're going to see instruments, they're going to be hearing music, they're going to be seeing photographs.
And it's inevitable that the questions are going to go through everyone's mind. How does this relate to today? What do we have to do to prevent anything like what we're commemorating from happening?
And I think the way the music, the photographs, the instruments, the care in rehabilitating the instruments, care that Daniel Levin took in documenting what took place, all of that comes together to remind people how important it is to make sure that we're doing our part to make sure that things like this don't happen again.
Julia Meek: Thank you. And now I am curious, as the saying goes, where there are no words, or words are not enough, we turn to art and music to tell our story. Is this true, in particular, in this case, would you say?
Jim Palermo: It's absolutely true. Music tells stories through emotion, right? You hear piece. It moves you. You might cry. It might make you think about something. These are all these pieces relate.
So, for instance, on the 13th of March, we have a piece that was written by a man who died in a concentration camp, the 1st String Quartet of Erwin Schulhoff, died in 1944. How many American audiences, how many people in Fort Wayne have ever heard this piece? We have a direct pipeline to someone who lived through that experience.
You can hear the music, and it might sound contemporary to your ears, but what you don't understand until you hear the piece is that this is a living, breathing human being who actually suffered through that experience.
But we're also playing Beethoven on that concert. And Beethoven, we always think of, he's the pinnacle, right? He supersedes everything. And so I think the commemoration is multifaceted, and there's lots to offer anyone who comes.
Julia Meek: Now, Michael, your organization is the oldest Jewish Federation in the state, recently, embarking on its second 100 years. What's the most important part of your mission, going forward?
Michael Theise: Well, for our community, for the Federation, we want to maintain our Jewish identity, Jewish principles, Jewish traditions.
We want to keep memories, history, education alive, support younger generations and ensure that we have a thriving Jewish community as part of a vibrant, multicultural Fort Wayne and Fort Wayne area community.
So, continuing traditions, ensuring a comfortable home for many, for the Jewish community, those are our primary goals, going forward into our second century.
Julia Meek: Noble goals. Much luck. And last question, that story your commemoration tells us speaks to and through our whole community. What is the most essential takeaway you hope to see as these two weeks unfold, for the whole community?
Jim Palermo: For me, I think we educate people about what happened. There are so many people who don't know what happened in the Holocaust. Music is a great vehicle to learn, because the music is attractive.
It speaks to people on a non-verbal level. So, if they can learn about the Holocaust, they can learn about these violins and the stories behind the violins, and see beautiful artwork, beautiful photography. It's glorious. Then you can connect lots of dots.
The kids who are teenagers now, they were eight and nine when we did this commemoration five years ago, and they're learning about the Holocaust now. So it's important to follow up what they learn in the classroom with these kinds of community commemorations.
Michael Theise: Thank you, Julia. And I would just like to add to that, I think Jim's point about education is so important. But I'd also like to add that the coming together, you know, when Jim mentions all the different venues that events will be taking place.
That's to make this easily accessible, that's to make comfortable gathering points for all. This isn't a Jewish community-only event. This is much wider, much larger than that.
So, coming together, you know, being with our fellow citizens, taking in beautiful art, understanding a story, learning from it, taking those memories back to our families, being able to share with others.
All of that is so important, but community is an extremely important point here as well.
Julia Meek: Michael Theiss is Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of Fort Wayne and Jim Palermo, Executive Director of Pearl Arts. Thank you both so much for sharing this offering and the story of it with us. Do carry the gift.
Jim Palermo: Thank you so much.
Michael Theise: Thank you, Julia, thank you, Jim.
