Building Bridges Through the Power of Music
Violins of Hope is an extraordinary collection of 70 restored string instruments, played by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust. Lovingly restored by Israeli violinmaker Amnon Weinstein and his son, Avshalom Weinstein, each violin carries a unique story of resilience. These instruments have traveled the globe and now, they return to Jacksonville to inspire and educate our community.
Title Sponsor: Dr. Eugene and Brenda Wolchok
Music Director Courtney Lewis conducts the Jacksonville Symphony and Jacksonville Symphony Chorus in a moving performance. Symphony musicians will play on Violins of Hope instruments with readings provided in between the musical selections.
February 15, 2025 7:30 pm
Jacoby Symphony Hall
Community educational events will foster dialogue, inclusion and understanding between diverse communities through panelist discussions, ensemble performances and a display of Violins of Hope instruments. There is no cost to attend these events, but registration is required as spaces are limited.
February 10, 2025 7:00 pm
(Made possible with support from the Together Strong Community Fund)
University of North Florida
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing
against a white stone…
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly ‘way up high.
It went away I’m sure because it wished
to kiss the world goodbye.
For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don’t live in here,
In the ghetto.
George Perlasca, an Italian businessman who lived on the outskirts of Padua and who died in 1992, would seem an unlikely hero. Yet he saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazi death camps during WWII, and indeed his heroism went unremembered and unacknowledged for nearly 45 years. He quietly and repeatedly risked his own safety.
In the 1930s Perlasca, while an admirer of dictator of Benito Mussolini, didn’t like the Nazis. And he particularly didn’t like Nazism’s anti-Semitic persecutions, or the anti-Semitic racist policies implemented by Italy’s Fascist government after Mussolini forged an alliance with Hitler.
“It’s simple” he told a recent interviewer, “all men are equal.” During World War II, Perlasca suddenly and unexpectedly found himself in a position to put his beliefs into practice.
Perlasca has been described as “Italy’s Wallenberg,” a reference to the Swedish diplomat who saved as many as 30,000 Jews in wartime Budapest by issuing them Swedish safe-conduct passes that became known as “Wallenberg passports.”
Without Madrid’s knowledge, Perlasca was able to safeguard Jews lodged in Spanish protected safe houses, and granted letters of protection, because a friend was able to get him attached to the Spanish mission in Budapest. These letters of protection saved them from arrest and deportation either by the Nazis or the Hungarian Fascists. The letters stated that “such and such a family has asked to go to Spain and while waiting to leave its members are under the protection of the Spanish government.”
Many years after the war, historians found a series of alarmed diplomatic notes that in those days passed among Budapest, Berlin and Madrid. The notes asked what Spain was doing and what could be the meaning of all those thousands of letters of protection the Spanish mission was granting to Hungarian Jews. In an interview, Perlasca said, “Madrid didn’t know anything. Fortunately, communications were impossible.”
Perlasca’s story remained a secret until 1987. When a book was being written about him, the author asked, “Why did you do what you did?”
Perlasca said, “Because I could not bear the sight of people branded as animals. Because I couldn’t bear to see children killed. I think it was this; I don’t think I was a hero. The bottom line is I had the opportunity, and I used it. We have a saying; opportunity makes a thief. Well, it made me something else. Unexpectedly I found myself a diplomat with many people depending on me. What would you have done?
In 1953, the state of Israel established Yom HaShoah to commemorate the six million Jews that perished during the Second World War. On this day we honor and mourn its victims. along with the world that was destroyed, and we pay homage to its survivors. We gather, have programs, discussions and candle lightings to remember all who were murdered. During this observance, I picture all the gatherings of all the six million victims, taking part in the Jewish life cycles: weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, birthdays and many other occasions with their children and grandchildren that they never had. In many places around the world, at special memorials, a country’s flag flies at half-mast. I wonder. How would the world look with six million flags flapping in the wind? How would the world look illuminated by six million candles? Imagine the commanding echo reverberated through the air by the reading of the six million names.
One of history’s most despicable tyrants, Adolph Hitler, sought to redefine morality as a good exclusively for the Aryan race. He bathed mankind in oceans of blood, murdering millions of Jews, old and young, and even the unborn. Negroes saw that such hideous racism, though not immediately applied to them, must sooner or later encompass them, and willingly they supported the struggle to achieve his defeat.
There are Hitlers loose in America today, both in high and low places. As the tensions and bewilderment of economic problems become more severe, history’s scapegoats – the Jews – will be joined by new scapegoats, the Negroes. The Hitlers will seek to divert people’s minds and turn their frustrations and anger to the helpless, to the outnumbered. Then whether the Negro and Jew shall live in peace will depend upon how firmly they resist, how effectively they reach the minds of the decent Americans to halt this deadly diversion.
Every Negro leader is keenly aware, from direct and personal experience, that the segregationists make no fine distinctions between the Negro and the Jew. The irrational hatred motivating his actions is as readily turned against Catholic, Jew, Quaker, Liberal and One-Worlder, as it is against the Negro. Some have jeered at Jews with Negroes; some have bombed the homes and churches of Negroes; and in recent acts of inhuman barbarity, some have bombed your synagogues—indeed right here in Florida… the races of America fly blindly at both of us caring not at all which of us falls. Their aim is to maintain through cruel segregation groups whose uses as scapegoats can facilitate their political and social rule over all people. Our common fight is against these deadly enemies of democracy, and our glory is that we are chosen to prove that courage is a characteristic of oppressed people, however cynically and brutally they are denied full equality and freedom.
Social progress is never attained by passive waiting. It comes only through the tireless efforts and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Without this persistent work, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social stagnation. So, we are challenged to work indefatigably for the full realization of the dream of brotherhood and integration. This is no time for apathy nor complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.
We are not the darkness we endured, we are the light that refused to surrender.
Jewish tradition teaches: “You are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
This is a universal call to action.
A rejection of apathy.
Even when the task appears overwhelming.
In a world intermingled with both good and evil, know that your acts — from kindness to courage — can impact a brighter destiny for mankind.
It’s the grace we give each other, to be unapologetically authentic and brave, that’s truly powerful.
We do not need to be chosen anymore, because we already belong.
My grandfather’s name was Zion Goldstein.
I did not know him.
He grew up a small town in Poland.
I am told his father was the town’s Rabbi.
By the sheerest of luck he was not in Poland
when the Germans came.
He had moved to Egypt, and met my
grandmother there.
He never spoke about his family.
He never saw them again.
He was exiled out of Egypt in 1956 when Nassar
came to power.
I was six months old, so I was also exiled.
He died of a heart attack in the street in
Geneva with his briefcase in his hand.
Too much heartbreak for one heart to bear.
His name was Zion, I did not know him.
When the Nazis took over the Netherlands in May 1940, my parents were forced into hiding. For the next two years, six months and fourteen days, from November 1942 through May 1945, they stayed hidden in Rotterdam, on the third floor, in the apartment of an incredibly brave woman named Gien Dane.
My father’s entire family was murdered in the mass extermination camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor. Over seventy-five percent of Dutch Jews were murdered. In Europe, over six million.
We must speak up against oppression.
We must remember history, because it can be repeated.
We must always speak for those voices that can no longer speak.
Never forget.
Hate is hate.
Love is love.
Like my one grandmother who survived, I choose love.
The Holocaust has a future that encompasses generations. The Shoah did not end after the defeat of Germany. It lives on in the memories of survivors who could not forget parents, siblings and other victims. In their testimonies, spoken aloud or imagined in silence, they reconstructed the lives of those who perished. Many survivors, indelibly marked by the Holocaust, spent their lives in the shadows cast by that epic trauma long after it receded. A generation later, survivors’ children and grandchildren face a world where the renewed threat of fascism once again menaces Jews. After October 7, 2023, my strong-willed daughter asks tearfully, “What do I tell the children?” I imagine many more grandparents and parents heard the same question and, like me, struggled to find an answer. We are not done with the Holocaust and it is not finished with us.
Drs. Anne and Robert Lufrano
Henri Landwirth Family Advised Fund
Together Strong Community Fund
The Community Foundation of Northeast Florida
Shorstein Family Foundation
Richard and Kimberly Sisisky
Carolyn and Elliot Zisser
Jewish Federation and Foundation of Northeast Florida
William and Lisa Libman
Jared and Hilary Libman
Steven Libman and Carol Killworth
Stephen and Judith Silverman
Dr. Warner Webb and Sherrie Calvert Webb
Mr. and Mrs. Daniel M. Edelman
As of November 26, 2024
Elizabeth Anderson, One Jax
Cecelia Cristol, Jewish Family & Community Services
Dr. Barbara Darby, Jacksonville Symphony Board
Mariam Feist, Jewish Federation & Foundation for Northeast Florida
Rabbi Maya Glasser, Congregation Ahavath Chesed
Stacey Goldring, Searching for Identity Foundation
Elyse Gustafson, Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd
Rodney Hurst, Civil Rights Activist and Historian
Dr. Courtney Krolikoski, Jacksonville University
Anne Lufrano, Retired Jacksonville Symphony Board Member
Patricia McElroy, VyStar Foundation
Patrick Nolan, University of North Florida
Isaiah Oliver, Community Foundation of Northeast Florida
Lior Spring, Miller Family Foundation
Brenda Wolchok, Retired Jacksonville Symphony Board Member
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