During World War II, within the walls of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, a Jewish prisoner secretly penned a short note and hid it inside a violin he had crafted under harrowing circumstances—a message to the future that would remain undiscovered for more than 80 years, reports the AP. "Trial instrument, made under difficult conditions with no tools and materials," the worn note read. "Dachau. Anno 1941, Franciszek Kempa." The origins of the violin, built in 1941 by "Franz" Kempa while imprisoned by the Nazis at Dachau, remained unnoticed for decades. It wasn't until art dealers in Hungary sent the instrument out for repairs—after having stored it for years—that its history came to light.
Although the instrument's craftsmanship pointed clearly to a skilled maker, the professional repairing it was puzzled by the poor quality of the wood and the crude tools used to create it, which didn't match the evident skill involved. "You can see that it's a master violin, made by a man who was proficient in his craft," says Szandra Katona, one of the Hungarian art dealers who discovered the origins of the violin. "But the choice of wood was completely incomprehensible." Motivated by the contradiction, Katona disassembled the violin, revealing Kempa's hidden note—an apparent explanation, even apology, from a master violin maker forced by the brutal limitations of his captivity to build an instrument that fell short of his own standards.
At least 40,000 are believed to have died in Dachau. There is ample evidence that musical instruments were present in concentration camps during World War II. Kempa's "violin of hope" is the only known instrument actually built inside the camp. Kempa, according to documents, survived the war and returned to his native Poland to continue making instruments before dying in 1953. Documents also suggest that Kempa was known to the Nazis as an instrument maker—something Tamás Tálosi, one of the art dealers, believes may have spared him. "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," Tálosi says. "You focus not on the problem, but on the task itself."
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