A few years ago, a 90-something years old, lovely lady and her three daughters came to our workshop in Tel Aviv. Signora Morpurgo and her daughters brought us the much-treasured violin of Gualtiero Morpurgo, the head of their family, from Milan, Italy.

Erich Weininger was a butcher in Vienna as well as an amateur violinist. When the Nazis marched into Austria in 1938, Erich was arrested and sent to Dachau, where he managed to bring along his violin.

Music comes out of all the windows of the tiny house, nestled somewhere, in a small village lost in the middle of the quiet Belgian countryside. The musician: a young Jewish boy who fled Poland, accompanied by the only member of his family who had survived – his violin.

This is a typical story of a Jewish family in Romania. Two sisters, 9 and 11, shared the same violin. Both took music lessons with a nice teacher while their mother watched over and made sure they practice every day.

She was born in 1925 as Valeria Teichner in Hungary, but in 1944, Auschwitz, was named A 12763. She started violin lessons at age 6 and stopped playing only when life became unbearable. On the cattle train to Auschwitz, 1944, she forgot her violin.

Alex and Fanny Hecht had two sons, Fritz and Ernst. They lived in Billefeld, Germany. When the Nazis took over in Germany, they left for Holland and found a home in Amsterdam. There, Fanny, a violinist, befriended a Christian neighbor, Helena Visser, who also played the violin, as did her daughter, Helena.

This is a story of a miraculous violin that was buried under the snow, traveled to Palestine, then to Switzerland, Italy and returned to Israel. Heinrich Herrmann grew up in Schwabach and Nirenberg, in the south of Germany where he learned to play the violin.

This violin belonged to Abram Merczynski. In August 1944, Abram and his two brothers, Isak and Zysman were deported from the ghetto in Lodz, Poland, to Auschwitz and then to Dachau concentration camp. Abram was 21 years old and played his violin wherever he was, even in the labor camp he was sent to, Kaufering, a subcamp of Dachau.

Max Beker was born to a family with a long standing musical tradition in Vilna, then Poland. His grandfather was the conductor of the Czar’s brass band and he played with both his father and brother to help support the family.