By Charlene Riegger
Director of Marketing
Music brings people together and often tells compelling stories that words alone cannot express. At Congregation Brith Sholom in Bethlehem on September 13, the stories came from the different sides of World War II—the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Over 200 members gathered that evening to hear the Strings of Hope performance and multimedia presentation.
The live performers included world-renowned cellist Udi Bar-David, Joe Small on the taiko (Japanese drum), and Amane Sakaguchi, a shamisen player whose family has for generations played that traditional three-stringed Japanese instrument often used in kabuki performances. The multimedia presentation included short stories of Holocaust and Hiroshima survivors who were string instrument performers intertwined with live performances by Bar-David, Sakaguchi, and Small.
The first story was about David Arben, the only member of his family who survived the Holocaust. In 1997, Bar-David approached Arben, a violinist, and asked him to return to Poland with his second family, the Philadelphia Orchestra. Bar-David met with the Shoah Foundation, which sent a crew to Warsaw with the orchestra.
In Warsaw, Arben was hoping someone would recognize him or he’d recognize someone. To no avail. He visited the synagogue that he had attended prior to the war, which by then was reconstructed. He said he felt that his family was with him, but he couldn’t touch them. He played his violin in the synagogue for them.
The next story was about a Russian emigre who ended up in Japan. Sergey Palchikoff, a violinist and music teacher, and his family were about 2 miles from the center of Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped there. Miraculously, they survived and eventually found themselves in California, along with his violin. His grandson Anthony Draco wrote the book “Surviving Hiroshima” about his grandfather’s experiences.
Bar-David visited China and while standing outside the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra hall, he saw banners of prominent musicians. One of them stuck out to him. Ferdinand Adler, a Jewish musician from Vienna, had escaped from Dachau with his wife and ended up in Shanghai with help of Japanese diplomats. Adler became concert master of the Shanghai orchestra. After the war, he was able to move back to Vienna with his family and he continued to perform on the violin. Sadly, he died of a heart attack at age 49. His violin is displayed in a museum in Vienna. The details of his story and his music can be seen in the movie “Visit from China.”
Bar-David then moved the presentation onto Violins of Hope, a collection of over 70 violins restored in Tel Aviv. Violin-makers Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein, father and son who work in Tel Aviv and Istanbul, own this collection of instruments that were saved and restored. They offer violins on loan for concerts. Bar-David plans to go on tour in 2026 with Niv Ashkenazi, who plays one of the violins that survived the Holocaust; Small; and Sakaguchi starting with the Lehigh Valley, Hiroshima, and Vienna. He said music collaboration can help to bring peace and coexistence.
In between each of these moving stories were live musical performances. Small began with a thumping taiko solo. Bar-David played traditional Jewish music. Sakaguchi played a whimsical solo inspired by racoons that beat their stomachs like drums. The three musicians then improvised “What Do Your Eyes Say,” written by the Israeli jazz musician Ziv Ravitz. The three also played their own version of “Lamidbar” (“To the Desert”). Bar-David joked that this might be the only time in history that a cello, a taiko, and a shamisen improvised these songs together. He hoped it turned out well.
Bar-David ended by saying, “I hope this will be a message for our world right now, when we finally realize that horrors are experienced by every side of a war. Maybe the sounds of music can just contribute a little bit to making all of us understand and feel that. It gives all of us, hopefully, a glimpse of hope.”
The Strings of Hope event was made possible through the generous support of the Judith and Stanley Walker Family Foundation in conjunction with the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley, the Lehigh Valley Jewish Clergy Group, Udi Bar-David, and Miko Green, representative of Japan Society of New York.