The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra will hold a special concert in honor of its founder virtuoso violinist Bronisław Huberman z”l. The concert will open with a presentation of the “Jewish Rescuers Citation” in his memory by B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust.
The concert will take place on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025, at 20:00, at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium, Tel Aviv Cultural Center, 1 Huberman Street Tel Aviv. The program will feature the Brahms violin concerto—a signature piece played by Huberman—played by renowned soloist Maxim Vengerov under the baton of musical director Maestro Lahav Shani. Speakers at the event will include Arieh Barnea, committee chairman and Alan Schneider, director of B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem and secretary of the Jewish Rescuers Citation Subcommittee.
Prior to the concert, at 17:45, the Josh Aronson documentary “Orchestra of Exiles,” about Huberman and the founding of the orchestra will be screened, preceded by an introduction from Prof. Gideon Greif, a Holocaust historian, educator and member of the committee.
“Huberman used his immense personal reputation in a seven-year struggle to establish the orchestra, endangering his life in the process he believed would save Jewish lives—as it undoubtedly did,” Schneider said. “We salute Bronisław Huberman for his foresight and courage and will memorialize him along with all the Jewish rescuers in a new Jewish Rescuers grove planned together with KKL-JNF on Mount Herzl.”
Bronisław Huberman (Poland, 1882-Switzerland, 1947) was a gifted violinist of world renown who established Germany as his base of operations. Although he could have left Nazi Germany to pursue his art away from the Nazis, he dedicated himself to establishing a first-class orchestra in provincial Eretz Israel as a means for rescuing Jewish musicians from the impending disaster he predicted would befall Europe and its Jews. He founded the first professional orchestra in Eretz Israel, which later became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra—Israel’s representative orchestra. As early as 1933, 8,000 Jewish artists and intellectuals were fired from their positions in orchestras, theaters and universities in Germany. Due to rising anti-Semitism and the good impression he gained from visiting the Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel, Huberman abandoned his embrace of Pan-Europeanism and adopted the cause of Zionism.
In 1934, he publicly refused to play in Germany (as did famous musicians such as conductor Maestro Arturo Toscanini and solo violinist Jascha Heifetz), accepting an offer to teach at the Vienna School of Music. To hire first-tier musicians, Huberman traveled back to Germany in late 1935 to conduct auditions in Berlin and across Germany, despite the looming threat of the Nuremburg Laws and the danger posed to him due to his public criticism of the Nazis. To complete the roster of first-class musicians ready to travel to the underdeveloped pre-state Israel, Huberman held auditions also in Prague, Budapest, Warsaw and other European cities. The pressure to establish the orchestra before the onset of war, the need to raise funds, and logistical challenges—particularly in securing the necessary immigration certificates for his musicians and their families—caused Huberman significant mental and physical distress. Huberman traveled to London and with the assistance of World Zionist Organization President Dr. Chaim Weizmann, he received the necessary permits to bring his musicians from Europe to Tel Aviv. The first musicians arrived in Eretz Israel in October 1936 and the orchestra performed their first concert on Dec. 26, 1936, under the baton of Toscanini, who conducted some 75 outstanding Jewish musicians from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Holland and Poland, whose lives were spared due to the heroism of Huberman.
The Committee to Recognize the Heroism of the Jewish Rescuers during the Holocaust was established in 2000 by the late Haim Roet, a Dutch Jew who was rescued as a child with the intervention of both of Jews and non-Jews. The Committee was founded with the purpose of identifying Jews who endangered themselves during the Holocaust to rescue fellow Jews and raise public awareness in Israel and throughout the world to the phenomenon of Jewish rescue, presenting it as a Jewish national and global humanitarian model. In 2020, Attorney Arye Barnea, a second-generation Holocaust educator and researcher, was appointed chairman of the committee. For many years, the State of Israel expressed gratitude towards Jews who challenged the Nazis through armed resistance and towards members of other nations who endangered their lives to rescue Jews (“Righteous Among the Nations”). Jews who risked themselves to save their fellow brothers and sisters received relatively little attention and recognition.
The Committee operates in partnership with B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem. Schneider initiated the “Jewish Rescuers Citation” in 2011 as a joint project with the Committee. Until today, the citation has been presented to 650 women and men who operated in Nazi-controlled areas in France, Hungary, Greece, Germany, Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Italy, Latvia, Austria, Romania, Belgium, Morocco, Algiers, Libya, Denmark and the Netherlands as an expression of appreciation for the “devotion, courage and heroism” they exhibited in rescuing fellow Jews during the Holocaust.
For further information, please contact Alan Schneider, Director, B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem: aschneider@bnaibrith.org; 052-5536441.