Amnon Weinstein

Amnon Weinstein was born in 1939 in Tel Aviv

Amnon Weinstein was born in Tel Aviv in 1939. His father, Moshe Weinstein, trained as a violin maker in Warsaw and opened a violin workshop in Tel Aviv after moving to the country. The family members who stayed in Europe were murdered in the Holocaust.

Weinstein first learned the craft from his father. He then studied violin making in Cremona, Italy. He later brought his son Avshalom into the family trade.

In the 1980s a man brought him his grandfather's violin, which had been played in Auschwitz, and Weinstein found ashes inside it. From 1996 he collected and restored string instruments tied to the Holocaust and recorded their stories. The collection, called Violins of Hope, grew to more than 60 instruments.

The instruments were played in concerts and shown in exhibitions in Israel, Europe, Turkey, Mexico and the United States, often with Holocaust education events. He also helped found and direct Keshet Eilon, a violin center at Kibbutz Eilon. He was married to Assaela, daughter of partisan Asael Bielski, and died in Tel Aviv in 2024.