Musicians will perform a “Concert of Hope” on Monday, April 17, at Prairie State College to honor those who played violins before and during the tragedies that beset the Jewish people during the Holocaust and World War II.
Musicians from the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra and the South Suburban College Orchestra will perform for the free concert at 7 p.m. in the Barnes & Noble Auditorium at PSC, 202 S. Halsted St., Chicago Heights.
“It’s really an incredible meld of organizations coming together for hope,” said Ilene Uhlmann of Flossmoor.
She serves as director of community engagement for Jewish Community Center Chicago, the organization helping to curate the various performances on instruments that belonged to Jewish musicians. It is traveling throughout the Chicago area, as well as Peoria, Springfield and Urbana-Champaign.
The instrument collection, known as the “Violins of Hope,” features more than 70 violins, a viola and a cello that were played by Jewish musicians before and during World War II.
“These instruments have survived an experience that’s unthinkable. We don’t ever want it to happen again. We don’t know if some of these people survived, and some of them did not. The instruments are here and many of them are playable. They carry strong messages of hope, resilience and resistance,” Uhlmann said.
One of the violins that will be played during the PSC concert was dedicated to the Bielski Resistance Group.
“The people who played this violin, they survived in the forest. They were Jews and resistance fighters and they survived in the forest” in territory that had been Poland but was annexed into Russia during the war. “That’s a very powerful story,” Uhlmann said.
The concert is part of the presentation of “Americans and the Holocaust” at the PSC Library. The traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is open to the public through April 27. It examines the motives, pressures, and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism, war and genocide in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s.
Uhlmann helped set up a display of several violins at Prairie State. Placards explain the history behind the instruments, but for others the history of the musicians and their instruments is unknown.
Uhlmann said, “Violins of Hope just adds another dimension” to the Holocaust exhibit.
“Music, the arts – they have this unique ability to inspire people,” she said. “I’m hoping that the strong stories, seeing these instruments, hearing them played will change some people’s minds and it will make a difference moving forward.”