The Fiddle
By Natalie Cumming
11 May 2022
On Wednesday 11 May, 8.00pm Yad Vashem UK hosted, via Zoom, a Book Club event discussing the book: The Fiddle by Natalie Cumming. Author, Natalie Cumming, facilitated the Book Club event. John Deery producer at JoeJack facilitated the Q&A.
To purchase a copy of this book:
Synopsis
A true story, tracing a precious violin across landscapes devastated by war and terror, to safety and restoration in 21st century Britain. Abraham and his family flee the Bolsheviks, from St. Petersburg to Odessa and safety in the UK. Abraham’s skill on the violin earns them food and lodgings, as they struggle through the freezing Russian winter. The violin passes to Rosa, Abraham’s daughter, violinist with the famous Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Arrested by the Nazis on Kristallnacht 1938 she is sent to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, and then to Auschwitz, where her musical talent sees her forced to join the Women’s Orchestra and saves her life. She spends the last 5 months of the war in Bergen Belsen, before testifying at the Nuremberg Trials, exposing the horrors of the Nazi death camps. Rosa’s brother Israel, inherits the violin. A celebrated musician, he joins ENSA during the war, entertaining the troops. Post war, he investigates Nazis trying to escape trial. Finally, the violin comes to his daughter Natalie, who has written her family’s extraordinary story, lest the world should ever forget global events, against which the journey of this beautiful instrument is told.
In January 2018, the violin featured in BBC 2 UK television programme, The Repair Shop, where it was restored by John Dilworth, a well-known violin maker. It has now been donated to the Yehudi Menuhin School of Music