As Part of Annual Kristallnacht Commemoration, onn Sunday, Nov 9, 7:00-9:00 PM, at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades the JCC will mark its annual commemoration with a film screening of Return of the Violin, which chronicles the odyssey of a 300-year-old Stradivarius violin, once owned by Israeli Philharmonic founder Bronislaw Huberman, a heroic humanitarian who rescued hundreds of Jewish musicians from certain death in Nazi Europe by forming the Palestine Orchestra.

As a young Jewish boy in Poland, Huberman played the violin with such musical genius that he was gifted the priceless Stradivarius by a local nobleman so he could perform for composer Johannes Brahms. Huberman went on to become one of the great classical musicians of his day, but in 1936, after a concert at Carnegie Hall, the violin was stolen and he never saw it again. Fifty years later, the priceless violin resurfaced when the man who stole it made a deathbed confession. The instrument, which was sold twice, was finally purchased by Joshua Bell, who made it his mission to return to Huberman’s hometown in Poland to perform his favorite Brahms concerto. This true-to-life motion picture, featuring the Holocaust as a backdrop, was directed by Haim Hecht and tells the very intriguing story about a priceless instrument and the people whose lives it changed.

As a musical interlude, the evening will also include performances by two students from the Thurnauer School of Music, violinists Emma Barnett, age 17, and Mikayla Benson, age 12. These young musicians will perform two beautiful pieces: Oifn Pripitchik, a popular Yiddish song from before WWII, and Eili Eili, a piece based on a poem by Hannah Senesh.

For more information, call Jessica Wolf Spiegel, 201.408.1426. The evening is sponsored by The Richard H. Holzer Memorial Foundation and presented by The Martin Perlman & Jo-Ann Hassan Holocaust Education Institute.