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Amnon Weinstein, Renowned Holocaust Violin Restorer, Passes Away at 84

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Amnon Weinstein, an Israeli luthier who restored violins belonging to Jews during the Holocaust so that musicians around the world could play them in hopeful, melodic tributes to those silenced in Nazi death camps, passed away on March 4 in Tel Aviv. He was 84.

His son Avshalom Weinstein confirmed his death at a hospital.

Mr. Weinstein was the founder of Violins of Hope, an organization that provides the violins he restored to orchestras for concerts and educational programs commemorating the Holocaust. The instruments have been played in dozens of cities worldwide, including Berlin, at an event marking the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“Violins of Hope, it’s like a huge forest of sounds,” he said in a 2016 PBS documentary. “Each sound is standing for a boy, a girl, and men and women that will never talk again. But the violins, when they are played on, will speak for them.”

There are more than 60 Holocaust-era violins in his collection.

Some belonged to Jews who carried them in suitcases to concentration camps and were forced to play them in orchestras as prisoners marched to the gas chambers. Others were played to pass the time in Jewish ghettos. One was tossed from a train to a railway worker by a man who knew his fate.

“In the place where I now go, I don’t need a violin,” the man told the worker, in Mr. Weinstein’s telling. “Here, take my violin so it may live.”

The son of a violin repairman, Mr. Weinstein worked in a cramped and dusty workshop in the basement of an apartment building on King Solomon Street in Tel Aviv.

“Walking in there was like stepping in time,” James A. Grymes, a University of North Carolina-Charlotte music professor who wrote a book about Violins of Hope, said in an interview. “It really felt like you were in Stradivarius’s workshop — the smells of varnish, there’s parts of violins everywhere. It’s like he was the Willy Wonka of the violin.”

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One afternoon in the 1980s, a man with a prisoner identification tattoo on his arm arrived with a beaten-up violin that had, like him, survived Auschwitz.

“The top of the violin was damaged from having been played in the rain and snow,” Mr. Grymes wrote in “Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust — Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour” (2014). “When Amnon took the instrument apart, he discovered ashes inside that he could only assume to be fallout from the crematoria at Auschwitz.”

Mr. Weinstein, who had lost hundreds of members of his extended family in the Holocaust, nearly turned the man away; working on such an instrument seemed too emotionally fraught. But he ultimately repaired the violin, and the man gave it to his grandson to play.

Mr. Weinstein didn’t reflect much about working on Holocaust-era violins again until the late 1990s when he was training his son to become a luthier. The experience made him reflect on the role of violins in Jewish culture, from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to klezmer bands to Itzhak Perlman’s soaring concertos.

“It was kind of a must for the young generation to learn to play the violin,” he said in the PBS documentary. “And when you have a violin, Friday or Saturday evening, always somebody was taking it and playing on it.”

During a radio interview, he asked listeners to bring him instruments connected to the Holocaust. Soon, families began showing up at his workshop with violins that had been stored away in attics and cellars, each with its haunting story.

Mr. Weinstein was especially shaken by those recovered from concentration camps after the Allied invasion of Germany in 1945.

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“This was the last human sound that all of those people heard, the violin,” he said in a 2016 radio interview on WKSU in Ohio. “You cannot use the name beauty. But this was the beauty of this time, these violins.”

Amnon Weinstein was born on July 21, 1939, in Mandatory Palestine and grew up in Tel Aviv. His father, Moshe Weinstein, was a musician and violin repairman. His mother, Golda (Yevirovitz) Weinstein, was a pianist and a secretary in her husband’s workshop. They had immigrated from Lithuania to Mandatory Palestine in 1938, just as the persecution of Jews was escalating in Germany.

Mr. Weinstein grew up helping in his father’s violin shop. In his early 20s, he moved to Cremona, Italy — a city long known for its master luthiers — to study violin making. He continued his training in Paris under Étienne Vatelot, one of the world’s most renowned luthiers. In 1975, he married Assaela Bielski Gershoni, whose father was a Jewish resistance fighter during World War II, made famous in the 2008 film “Defiance.”

After his father’s death in 1986, Mr. Weinstein took over the family violin shop; he started Violins of Hope a decade later. The first concerts with the violins in the collection took place in Turkey and Israel in 2008. Others followed in Switzerland, Spain, and Mexico, as well as in Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia.

“Each concert is a victory,” he would often say.

Musicians, especially Jewish ones, have described playing violins from the collection as a soul-stirring experience.

“It’s emotional for me because I’m not there to play this violin, I’m there to let it speak,” Niv Ashkenazi, a violinist who recorded an album featuring an instrument from the collection, said in an interview. “Our job as musicians is to just let these violins shine through.”

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In addition to his son Avshalom, who plans to continue the Violins of Hope project, Mr. Weinstein is survived by his wife, two other children, Merav Vonshak and Yehonatan Weinstein, and seven grandchildren.

In 2016, Mr. Weinstein was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, one of the country’s highest honors.

During the award ceremony, Germany’s foreign minister at the time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, spoke directly to Mr. Weinstein.

“A human soul lies behind each of your priceless violins,” he said. “A human who was persecuted, tormented, silenced by unimaginable violence and cruelty.”

Mr. Steinmeier spoke about the man who had tossed his violin from the train. He described a prisoner playing a violin in Auschwitz.

“Each violin represents a person, Amnon,” he said. “And when your violins play, they represent six million people.”

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Is now the right time to invest in gold as prices have cooled?

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Now may be the time to buy gold following a recent lull in its price.

Getty Images/iStockphoto

The price of gold has climbed to record highs recently and has remained strong through much of April. And, that growth continued until the precious metal traded at around $2,390 per ounce on April 19, 2024. But since, growth in the price of the precious metal has cooled, with gold’s price now hovering around $2,300 per ounce.

This lull in gold’s price may represent an investment opportunity.

In general, investing is centered around buying assets when prices are low and selling them when prices are high – generating a profit on the difference between the two. So, considering the declines in gold’s price over the past few days, now may be the time to make your investment. But is buying gold during this lull in prices really a good idea?

Compare your gold investment options among leading brokers now.

Gold prices have cooled. Should you buy in now?

With gold’s price down from recent highs, you may be wondering if now is the right time to buy in. There are several reasons the dip in gold’s price may represent an opportunity to buy. Here are some of the biggest:

Prices may rise again

If looking at a gold price chart shows anything for certain, it shows that changes in the overall growth of the medal come in fits and spurts. Periods of price growth are typically followed by periods of declines and vice versa.

But with inflation rising in recent months – and with gold’s reputation as a safe-haven asset that can hedge against inflation – it only makes sense that the price of the precious metal will eventually start to head up again in the future. While attempting to time that directional change may be tricky, buying the precious metal while the price is down gives you the opportunity to take advantage of any upward movement that may be ahead.

Add gold to your portfolio now before prices have a chance to rise.

You may be able to make a quick profit

Gold isn’t known as an asset in which you can earn a quick return, but in today’s market, that may be the case. Don’t forget that in January, gold was trading at just $2,000 per ounce. And, by mid-April, the commodity’s price had climbed to around $2,400 per ounce. That’s about 20% growth in a matter of months, much of which happened since March 1 – an impressive climb for any investment asset.

Perhaps more importantly, gold’s price growth through the beginning of 2024 shows that the commodity doesn’t have to be a buy and hold style investment that you keep in a safety deposit box or precious metal depository for years to come. There’s also the possibility that the commodity’s price could climb further ahead, making it a compelling way to potentially generate a quick profit.

There are other benefits of investing in gold

There are other benefits of investing in gold that have little to do with the price growth seen thus far in 2024 – or the lull in prices seen over the past couple of days. Those benefits include:

  • Inflation protection: Gold has long been considered an inflation hedge, and for good reason. When inflation drives the prices of consumer goods and services up – and the value of the dollar down – gold’s price tends to rise. So, it could be used to maintain the value of your portfolio during inflationary economic conditions. That’s important in today’s economic environment as stubborn inflation continues to weigh on the value of the dollar.
  • Portfolio diversification: Gold’s price doesn’t always move in the same pattern that bonds or stocks do. So, mixing a reasonable amount of gold into your portfolio (up to 10% of your portfolio assets) as a diversifier could protect you from losses should one or more of your traditional portfolio assets fall in value. “If you have less than 5% – 10% of your net worth in commodities & FX (forex), you should absolutely consider adding exposure to gold and other precious metals,” says Vijay Marolia, money manager and managing partner at the wealth management firm, Regal Point Capital.

The bottom line

Gold’s price has fallen from recent highs – which may represent an opportunity to tap into growth ahead. However, gold isn’t simply a “buy while it’s low and sell while it’s a high” kind of investment opportunity. The commodity can also protect your portfolio from the stubborn inflation we’ve seen thus far in 2024 while acting as a diversification tool that could increase your risk-adjusted portfolio returns. So, consider adding gold to your portfolio today while it has the potential to grow in value.

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