During World War II, Polish-Jewish luthier Franciszek “Franz” Kempa was imprisoned at Dachau, the first concentration camp established by the Nazis in 1933 in southern Germany. Based on the discovery of a note hidden in a recently examined instrument, it seems that Kempa masterfully crafted a violin out of the crude materials available to him while at Dachau.
The interior note reads: “Trial instrument, made under difficult conditions with no tools and materials. Dachau. Anno 1941, Franciszek Kempa.”
According to an article at The Violin Channel:
While musical instruments existed in concentration camps across Central and Eastern Europe during World War II, all known instruments that survived Dachau were brought in by prisoners. Kempa’s violin is the only known violin that was built inside the camp. It is unknown how the violin left Dachau and arrived in Hungary, but documents provided by the museum at the Dachau memorial site show that Kempa survived the war and returned to his native Poland to continue making instruments before dying in 1953.
The documents also suggest that Kempa was known to the Nazis as an instrument maker — one of the art dealers believe that this may have saved Kempa’s life.
Watch an AP video report of this discovery at www.euronews.com.
[Sources: theviolinchannel.com, euronews.com]