- Person
- Yehudi Menuhin
- Lived
- 1916–1999
- Field
- Violin, music education
- From
- American-born British
The story
Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City in 1916. His father, Moshe Menuhin, was a Lithuanian Jew descended from a rabbinical family. His name, Yehudi, means Jew in Hebrew. A child prodigy, he became one of the most famous violinists in the world, and during the Second World War he used that fame to play for Allied soldiers and to support the Free French.
When the war in Europe ended and the concentration camps were liberated in April 1945, Menuhin chose to go where few performers would. In June and July 1945 he played for surviving inmates of several camps. His accompanist was the English composer Benjamin Britten, who played the piano.
The most famous of these concerts took place at Bergen-Belsen on 27 July 1945, for displaced persons who had survived the camp. It was held in the former officers' ballroom of a large Wehrmacht headquarters, a building the British army called the Roundhouse. After the liberation the room had served as a crowded hospital ward, and by July it was being used for cultural events. For people who had lost families, homes and years of their lives, the music was a moment of dignity and beauty after unimaginable suffering.
Menuhin then did something many found difficult to understand. In 1947 he returned to Germany to play concertos with the Berlin Philharmonic under the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, as an act of reconciliation. He is described as the first Jewish musician to do so after the Holocaust. He believed music could help rebuild bridges between peoples who had been torn apart by hatred.
That belief guided the rest of his life. He became known as a humanitarian as well as a musician, and in 1992 he was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. In 2016, a commemorative concert was held in the same room at Bergen-Belsen to remember the day he and Britten played there.
Why it matters
Menuhin's concerts for camp survivors, and his choice to use music for reconciliation, remain a powerful example of how art can bring comfort and help heal divisions after atrocity.
About Yehudi Menuhin
Violinist who played for Belsen survivors in 1945, then founded a school and Live Music Now to bring live music into hospitals, care homes, prisons and poor schools.
More about Yehudi Menuhin
Sources
- Yehudi Menuhin Wikipedia
- Report on the concert given at Bergen-Belsen on 28 August 2016 Yehudi Menuhin Centenary
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.