A new Reader Review. Thanks very much to “Sideliner” from Spain!
Visit the shop of my new luthier, Cameron Robertson, at Cameron’s Violin Shop in Atlanta!
Copies of “Pavel’s Violin” are soon to be featured in the Symphony Store at the Nashville Symphony, as a part of their Violins of Hope Nashville exhibition!
See their website for more information: http://violinsofhopenashville.com/
Walter William Melnyk, Pavel’s Violin
From the author: “Pavel’s Violin is an historical novel based upon the true stories of Pavel Lustig, a survivor of Terezin and Auschwitz, and a Jakob Stainer model violin that he received after his escape from an Auschwitz death march. It is a tale of joy, sorrow, despair and hope, inspired through the music of this instrument.” Melnyk is a Tennessee-based author, and all sales of his book go to Holocaust awareness efforts. Learn more at PavelsViolin.com.
Visit Violins of Hope Nashville, sponsored by the Nashville Symphony:
About Violins of Hope
The Violins of Hope are a collection of restored instruments played by Jewish musicians during The Holocaust. These instruments have survived concentration camps, pogroms and many long journeys to tell remarkable stories of injustice, suffering, resilience and survival. The Nashville Symphony is bringing the Violins of Hope to Nashville to facilitate a citywide dialogue about music, art, social justice and free expression.
The Nashville Symphony has partnered with more than two dozen local groups and organizations on a community-wide series of events around these instruments, highlighted by an exhibition at the Nashville Public Library. The sound, presence and stories of these instruments will drive the creation of music, visual art, theater, public conversation, interfaith dialogue, readings and educational activities throughout Middle Tennessee.
“Each of these instruments has a remarkable story to tell about resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable difficulty,” says Alan D. Valentine, Nashville Symphony president and CEO. “This singular collection will serve as a springboard for many of Nashville’s cultural organizations to explore the vital role that music, the arts and creativity play in all of our lives. We are thrilled to be working with so many enthusiastic partners on this historic initiative.”
“The Jewish Federation of Nashville is honored to partner with the Nashville Symphony in bringing the Violins of Hope to Nashville,” says Mark S. Freedman, Executive Director of the Jewish Federation and Jewish Foundation of Nashville and Middle Tennessee. “For our Jewish community, this represents a profoundly important opportunity to let these sacred instruments provide a measure of redemption to the millions of Holocaust victims who perished simply because they were Jews. These violins should serve as a clarion call throughout our city that the words ‘Never Again’ must resonate through every one of us in our collective struggle to overcome bigotry and hatred.” (from ViolinsofHopeNashville.org)
The great Austrian luthier, Jakob Stainer (c. 1619-1683) used this handwritten label in all his instruments:
Jacobus Stainer in Absam
prope Oeinipontum 16–
“Jakob Stainer, in (the town of) Absam, near Innsbruck, (date)
And this is the title of Part I of “Pavel’s Violin,” the story of Jakob Stainer and his crafting of the very special violin.
from the title page of Part I, a quotation from Paul Stoving, in “The Story of the Violin:”
The Tyrolean fastness will guard his memory,
and the eagle will tell it to its young,
and pine to pine,
and the winds in dark recesses
will mourn the memory of Jacobus Stainer.
And the tale goes on from there:
I. Jakob Stainer and the Making of the Violin
II. In the Palaces of Bishops and Emperors
III. The Jewish Community of the Moravian Countryside
IV. The Great Olomouc (AH-lah-moats) Synagogue
V. In Terezin Concentration Camp
VI. In Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp
VII. The Violin Comes to Pavel
The author, playing Pavel’s violin.
Excerpt from Chapter 40 of “Pavel’s Violin”
(C) 2017, Walter William Melnyk
All Rights Reserved
“A Nice Violin”
~ 6 March 1945 ~
Adam slowed his battered ammunition truck to a stop in front of the house, after another long day. Seven long trips up and down Vružná, Wrosna and Ostrý vrch. Live howitzer ammunition going up, empty shells coming down. It’s hard to tell whether he or his truck was covered with more mud. They’ll both have to be washed down before he can get some rest. The other trucks are already parked, with no sign of any mud having been removed. He rounds the house to the back gate, and finds Novak and Svododa standing there, watching the back window intently.
“Hey, guys, what’s . . .” They both wave him off wildly, and put fingers to their lips to shush him. So he approaches the gate silently, on tip-toe.
“What is it?” he whispers.
“There’s a cuckoo in the house,” Svoboda whispers back.
“A what?”
“Sssshhhhh.”
“A what?” asks Adam, more quietly.
“A cuckoo,” Novak whispers.
Adam listens carefully. There is a blackbird on the chimney pot, silently grooming its feathers. But no cuckoo, in or out.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Wait. Maybe it’ll start again.” And then it does. Quietly at first, then louder, then more softly again.
“Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.”
“Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.”
And then a child’s melody in ascending and descending scales of sixteenth notes and eighth notes. And then the cuckoo returns.
“It’s The Cuckoo Song,” you idiots,” says Adam. The other two laugh out loud, slapping him on the back.
“Had you goin’ though, didn’t we,” says Novak. “Still, it’s inside.”
The three sergeants cautiously sneek up to the back door, open it quietly, and step inside. Pavel is facing them, playing Komarovsky’s Cuckoo Song on a Violin, his face beaming with delete, enjoying their surprise. He finishs with a slow decrescendo of cuckoo calls. A-F, A-F, A-F; cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo, cu-koo, fading into silence. His audience pauses a moment in wonder, until Pavel bows, and then the three sergeants erupt into thunderous applause.
“It was here when I arrived, sitting on the table,” Pavel says, pointing to the open case. “Here’s the note that came with it.” He hands a slip of paper to Adam, who reads it aloud.
“Dear Pavel,
I hope you will like this Violin. It’s not so new, but very nice, I think. It
comes from a good friend, a Russian Transportation Officer named Sokolov, up in Górkie Wielki who remembers you from your arrival at his unit after your escape. He says you didn’t look much like a violinist then, but he takes my word for it, and wishes you the best. Remember the song we used to sing as kids, The Cuckoo Song? That should be the first thing you play! See you again sometime soon.
Love, Rasti
Pavel holds up the Violin for them to see. “It is a nice Violin,” he says.
It is probably safe to assume that the back room in the little house on the edge of Vendryné has never before experienced the sight of four Czech sergeants dancing circles around one another, and singing,
“Cuck-oo, cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo!”
(C) 2017 Walter William Melnyk
All Rights Reserved
From
“Pavel’s Violin,” chapter 21: “A Violin in Paradise.”
In the so-called “coffee house” in Terezin Concentration Camp, which was all for show, and where prisoners could not buy coffee.
“Přátelé,” she said in Czech, “My friends. I am happy to play for you today. I know the Coffee House usually presents cabaret music, or jazz, but today I wish to be a bit different.” She paused, and the room was silent. “A bit different” could be a dangerous thing.
“Today I wish to begin with an old musical comedy number by Škroup and Tyl. It’s about a dear old grandfather, who longs for the lost days of his youth.” Satisfied the program would be nothing but pious sentimentality, and not wishing to be subjected to such mush, two plainclothes SS officers got up and left, their coffee still cooling on the table. But the handful of Czechs present smiled inwardly, knowing what to expect. As Mira began the first notes of the tune, they sang silently along with her, “Where is my home, where is my home? The Czech country, my home.” They would have cheered at the end, but offered the safer, polite applause instead. Mira looked over to her friends’ table, smiling, as if to say,
“Do you see what I mean? It is the Violin that, for a few moments, makes the Paradise.”
from a Reader:
The story is real, a vivid account of the people who lived through an unthinkable time in our history.
Melnyk writes: “I hope you will not just learn about what happened,, but that you will become part of the story, yourself”…….”I hope that you will not only hear the Violin, but you will experience the playing of it”. Well he (the author) takes you there. You are one with the characters, and experience their pain, suffering, hope, and joy. And you hear the music. The wonderful music. The universal language that heals. The Song of Hope…
The author has selflessly pledged to donate all proceeds from the sale of this book to the United States Holocaust Museum and other Holocaust Memorials.
This tune appears several times in the tale of “Pavel’s Violin. Played in Part I by Jakob Stainer, and in Part III by Beylke, daugfhter of Levi ben Le’ev. (C) 4 July 2016 Walter William Melnyk
pavelsviolin.com 