In this video, 18-year-old Kingsley Lin, who is currently studying at the Yehudi Menuhin School, performs on a violin once played by Rosa Levinsky in the Auschwitz Women’s Orchestra. Levinsky spent the last five months of the war in Bergen-Belsen, and on being released in 1945, was transferred to a hospital in Germany, then returned home to the UK after testifying at Nuremberg.

Upon her death, the violin passed to Levinsky’s brother, a successful musician, who in turn left it to his daughter Natalie Cumming on his death in 1984. Cumming told her family’s story and that of the instrument in her book The Fiddle, and in 2018, the violin was restored in an episode of BB2’s The Repair Shop.

Following the restoration, the instrument was donated in perpetuity to The Yehudi Menuhin School.

 

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