Alex and Fanny Hecht lived in Bielefeld, Germany, with their two sons, Fritz and Ernst. When the Nazis came to power, the family fled to Amsterdam, hoping for safety. There, Fanny, herself a violinist, befriended her Christian neighbor Helena Visser, who also played the violin, as did her daughter.
By 1943, Nazi roundups in Amsterdam made deportation all but inevitable. One evening, Fanny knocked on Mrs. Visser’s door and entrusted her with her cherished violin. “I do not want the Germans to have it,” she told her neighbor. “After the war, when we come back, you can give it back to me. And if not, the violin will be yours.”
The Hecht family never returned. In 1943, Ernst (17) was murdered in Sobibor. Fanny and Alex were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed that September. Fritz, their eldest, died in Monowitz labor camp in January 1945. None survived.
For 74 years, the Visser family safeguarded the violin. In time, they decided it should return to Jewish hands. After learning of Violins of Hope, they traveled to Israel, visited Yad Vashem to research the Hechts’ fate, and then placed the violin with Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein—so it could once again be played, carrying forward the memory of Fanny, Alex, Fritz, and Ernst Hecht.
