The Violin of Hope
What do you do when your circumstances are hard?
- Option #1: Sit passively and complain.
- Option #2: Seek to be productive with what you have.
I can’t imagine more trying circumstances than being imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. These were not prisons of rehabilitation. They were places with absolutely no concern or care for those kept within their walls. It was a place that perhaps reminded many of the words over the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Yet even as these horrific camps remind us of man’s inhumanity of man, it can also remind us of the indomitable spirit of man. Take, for example, the violin that was recently discovered. More accurately, it was the note buried within the violin that was recently discovered that earned it the title “the violin of hope.”
Here’s what we know. Franciszek “Franz” Kempa was a Jewish prisoner at the Nazi concentration camp Dachau, and this was his violin. Having a musical instrument in such a dire place was not unheard of. The Nazis allowed instruments and even encouraged the prisoners to play. It was all part of their propaganda. “This is not a bad place. Look how happy they are! They’re even making music.”
What makes Kempa’s violin unique is that is the only one known to have been built while at a concentration camp. But all that was unknown until recently. The violin sat in storage for years, and it wasn’t until an art dealer in Hungary decided to get it repaired. The violin appeared to be a contradiction. It was well crafted, but it was created from poor wood with crude tools. According to Szandra Katona, one of the art dealers:
“If you look at its proportions and structure, you can see that it’s a master violin, made by a man who was proficient in his craft. But the choice of wood was completely incomprehensible.”
This odd construction led them to take the violon apart, and that’s when they found the note:
“Trial instrument, made under difficult conditions with no tools and materials. Dachau. Anno 1941, Franciszek Kempa.”
Kempa was a master craftsman. This was not his first violin, and the note almost reads like an apology. It’s as if to say, “I did the best I could with what I had under the most trying circumstances.”
One of the art dealers, Tamás Tálosi, said, “We named it the ‘violin of hope’ because if someone ends up in a difficult situation, having a task or a challenge helps them get through a lot of things. You focus not on the problem, but on the task itself, and I think this helped the maker of this instrument to survive the concentration camp.”
And Kempa did survive. Once liberated, Kempa returned to Poland and continued to craft fine instruments until his death in 1953. [Source]
This brings me back to my original question: What do you do when your circumstances are hard?
Lord, may I always give you my best. No matter the circumstances or how I feel, I want to do my part for the sake of your kingdom.
“Blessed is that servant whom the master finds doing his job when he comes” (Luke 12:43).
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