Although Bronislaw Huberman has been recognized in his hometown of Czestochowa, Poland, where the city’s Philharmonic Orchestra bears his name – and is housed in an impressive building that stands on the site of the famed New Synagogue destroyed by the Nazis on Christmas Day, 1939 – he is better known in Israel as the founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra in 1936, which evolved into the International Philharmonic Orchestra.
Last Saturday night, exactly a month after the 142nd anniversary of Huberman’s birth, the IPO held a special event that included a concert in honor of the violin virtuoso plus a special recognition from the B’nai B’rith (BB) World Center, which posthumously awarded him the Jewish Rescuers Citation.
Usually awarded to Jews who engaged in heroic rescue operations during the Holocaust, the citation in this case was awarded to someone who saved Jews in advance of the Holocaust. The award was given in partnership with the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust (JRJ).
The concert at the IPO’s home base – the Charles Bronfman Auditorium in the Tel Aviv Cultural Center at 1 Huberman Street, featured Maxim Vengerov performing Huberman’s signature piece, the Brahms violin concerto, under the baton of Musical Director Lahav Shani.
Speakers included JRJ Committee Chairman Aryeh Barnea, BB World Center-Jerusalem Director and Secretary of the Jewish Rescuers Citation Subcommittee Alan Schneider, and IPO Secretary General Yair Mashiach. The concert coincided with the release of three Israeli hostages from Gaza, which was acknowledged by all speakers, and concluded with maestro Shani conducting a resounding rendition of “Hatikvah” (Hope), Israel’s national anthem.
Prior to the concert, the Josh Aronson documentary Orchestra of Exiles, about Huberman and the founding of the orchestra, was screened with an introduction by Prof. Gideon Greif, a Holocaust historian, educator, and member of the committee.
Before the presentation of the citation award to Shani and IPO Chairman Yuval Shapiro, Mashiach noted that “the freedom-seeking creative spirit that weaves Judaism with enlightenment and internationality continues with us here today. At its inception and today as well, the Philharmonic expresses Israeli hope, a legacy of excellence, and a commitment to freedom, culture, and creativity.”
Addressing the legacy of rescue and responsibility, Barnea emphasized: “If we want there to be more rescuees in the challenges we face in this and coming generations, we need more rescuers, and if we want more rescuers, we need to pose an ethical imperative and to be a source of inspiration to the public, first and foremost to our children.”
Barnea emphasized that “Bronislaw Huberman was not an eminent musician who also saved lives; he was a great rescuer who was also a musician.”
Reflecting on the timing of the hostage release following Hanukkah and the recognition of Bronislaw Huberman, Schneider said, “Huberman used his immense personal reputation in a seven-year struggle to establish the orchestra, endangering his life in the process which he believed would save Jewish lives – as it undoubtedly did. We salute Bronislaw Huberman for his foresight and courage.”
Referencing the holiday prayer, he noted that events of those times are reflected in these days. Rising antisemitism in Germany had a profound effect on Jewish artists and intellectuals, 8,000 of whom were dismissed from orchestras, theaters, and universities.
Huberman, who had visited pre-state Israel, decided to establish an orchestra there of the best German-Jewish musicians and those from other European countries, some of whom, if not all, would undoubtedly have been murdered by the Nazis. In the final analysis, the initial nucleus of the orchestra included 75 musicians from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Holland, and Poland, who, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini, gave their first public performance in Tel Aviv in December 1936 after arriving in the country only two months earlier.
Auschwitz visitors
■ OSWIECIM, THE Polish name for Auschwitz, Poland, has countless visitors throughout the year, and not only on the anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Nazi extermination camp located there. Polish schoolchildren are regularly brought in large groups to learn of the horrors that can result from racist and religious prejudice.
“Throughout the year, many visitors to Auschwitz come to our synagogue to pray or reflect,” said Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation director general Jack Simony.
As the city prepares to host numerous survivors and dignitaries to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, its sole standing synagogue, the Auschwitz Jewish Center (AJC), will offer spiritual services, prayer, and reflection, along with guided tours of its museum that highlights the history of the Jewish community in Oswiecim.
On Monday, January 27, morning prayers will be held at 9.30 a.m. in the AJC’s historic building, once home to the Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue. Located at Pl. Ks. J. Skarbka 5, the service will be followed by an opportunity to explore the museum. The afternoon service will take place in the synagogue at 1 p.m., and the evening prayer will follow the official commemoration at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Before the Holocaust, Oswiecim was home to a vibrant Jewish community, comprising more than 50% of the city’s population and housing over 30 synagogues. Today, the AJC stands as the sole surviving synagogue from that period, serving as both a museum and an educational hub dedicated to combating hatred and bigotry.
Since its reopening 25 years ago, over 800,000 visitors have come to learn about Oswiecim’s rich Jewish history. Thousands of students, educators, first responders, and military personnel have participated in its impactful educational programs, which teach the lessons of the Holocaust from the very shadow of Auschwitz, the most iconic symbol of Nazi-German death and destruction.
Given the expected influx of visitors over the anniversary weekend, the museum and synagogue will be open for tours and prayers from January 24-26. Anyone wishing to participate in prayer services or tours is encouraged to contact the center at https://ajcfus.org/programs/#contact-popup.
■ IN ISRAEL, numerous institutions will be holding commemorative International Holocaust Remembrance Days (IHRD), including embassies and the cultural organizations attached to them or that work in cooperation with them.
These include the Austrian Embassy Tel Aviv, the Austrian Cultural Forum, and the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, which are hosting the opening of the House of Austrian History exhibition Only The Violins Remain at the academy’s recital hall on the Hebrew University Givat Ram campus in the evening of January 29.
The exhibition is dedicated to Alma and Arnold Rose, who were icons in Austrian musical life and Viennese high society. Their careers were abruptly cut short by the Anschluss in 1938. Alma Rose was one of approximately 66,000 Austrian Jews who did not survive.
She was deported to Auschwitz, where she conducted the women’s orchestra, and was able to save the lives of many Jewish female musicians. Her father, Arnold Rose, had managed to escape to London, where he died in 1946.
For a long time, they were forgotten in Austria, although their famous violins, which had passed into the hands of other musicians, were still played in the major opera houses and concert halls of the world, in the same way that Bronislaw Huberman’s Stradivarius violin has been played by other musicians.
Holocaust remembrance is not just a matter of remembering atrocities in the hope they will not be repeated. It’s also about remembering individual human beings, what they gave to the world, and what else they and others, including soldiers who died in battle, might have given had the Holocaust never happened.
■ THE ITALIAN Cultural Institute in Tel Aviv is hosting a film night at the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Cinematheques, where a unique documentary will be screened. Il Respiro di Shlomo is the story of Shlomo Venezia, who is perhaps the last of the Sonderkommandos, whose work in the extermination camps consisted of removing the clothes and valuables from corpses.
It traces his story from Thessaloniki in Greece to Auschwitz, but not only his personal story. Viewers will learn what life in Auschwitz was really like. After the war, Venezia moved to Italy, where he made his home.
The documentary follows Venezia’s life through the places where he spent time to his various arrests – firstly in Greece, beginning with the Jewish quarter of Thessaloniki, Athens, and then Haidari Prison. The visuals will include testimonies by Holocaust historian and author of the film, Marcello Pezzetti, as well as experts who will talk about multi-century Jewish life in Greece and the personal accounts of Venezia’s sons.
Nonetheless, the film is based primarily on Venezia’s direct testimony, collected by the author and director themselves for the CDEC (the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation) Memory Archive almost 30 years ago. Venezia himself leads the story, and it is his voice that takes viewers through his very hard and painful experience in a valuable documentary of historical reconstruction.
One of the benefits of technology is that it helps to preserve the voices and images of people no longer with us, as is the case with Venezia, whose voice remains a vital piece of testimony even though he has passed on.
■ IN ADDITION to President Isaac Herzog addressing the United Nations on IHRD, Israeli-Hungarian Holocaust Survivor Marianne Miller will join him, accompanied by her four children and seven grandchildren. One of her children is prize-winning actor, screenwriter, and comedian Adir Miller, whose latest movie, The Ring, in which he stars, is based on his own family’s Holocaust-related story.
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