BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW: ORCHESTRA
OF EXILES BY JOSH ARONSON
AND DENISE GEORGE
STEVEN KRAWITZ
JOSH ARONSON, Academy Award
German orchestras, Bronislaw dreamed of
creating a world-class orchestra in Palestine and saving
these musicians from the dangers the Nazis were unleashing
on European Jewry. Together with his wife Ida, Bronislaw
travelled across Europe, America and to Palestine to save
whole families from Europe. For the first season of his
orchestra, Huberman secured Arturo Toscanini, the world’s
most famous conductor, to lead his orchestra. This was a
great symbol of anti-fascist protest and it reverberated all
the way to Hitler’s office, when announced.
nominated film-maker (for Sound and Fury 2000), is the
author of “Orchestra of Exiles”, a book adaptation of his
2012 documentary of the same name. “Orchestra of Exiles”
tells the inspirational story of Bronislaw Huberman and the
origins of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.
Bronislaw, a child-prodigy, was born in 1882 to Jacob
and Alexandra Huberman, Polish Jews living in a small
provincial town. From a young age Jacob pushed his son to
master the violin. Bronislaw’s intense childhood
practising of the violin resulted in the creation of one of the
most celebrated violinists of the late 19th and 20th
centuries. At the age of 13, Franz Joseph, Emperor of
Austria and King of Hungary and his wife, Elizabeth,
Duchess of Bavaria, presented Bronislaw with a
Stradivarius violin, in honour of his great talent. The
Viennese musical greats: Johannes Braham, Gustav Mahler
and Johann Strauss all acknowledged his mastery of their
music and cried when he played. His first marriage to a
Hungarian actress, Elsa Galafres in 1910 was short lived,
but did produce Huberman’s only child, a son, Johannes.
World War one shattered Bronislaw’s world and he suffered
debilitating depression due to the war and his divorce.
During his stay in an Austrian clinic he met Ida Ibbeken,
a nurse who he would later marry and who would partner
with him on his humanitarian projects.
The post war years saw Huberman enrolling at the
Sorbonne to complete an education his music training had
denied him. In Paris he becomes a believer in Pacifism and
in the Pan-Europa peace movement, befriending Albert
Einstein, amongst others. Zionism did not feature as a
viable option for European Jews in Huberman’s thinking.
Once Huberman started playing concerts again, he
criss-crossed the world bringing beauty and joy to
music–loving audiences. Aronson, in an interview told me
that Huberman played in South Africa during this time.
Having played for music-starved audiences in British
Palestine in 1929, Bronislaw underwent a transformation in
his views of Zionism that would lay the foundations of his
greatest legacy.
It is his response to the growing anti-Semitism of Hitler’s
Germany that spurs Bronislaw into action, gaining him his
legacy and elevating him from supreme musician to a man
that the Jewish nation is eternally indebted to. With German Jewish musicians barred from their jobs in the great
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To create a world class orchestra in Palestine by saving
European Jews would seem to be an undertaking the
Zionist enterprise would quickly endorse and support, but
this was not so. Huberman had to lobby Zionist and British
colonial authorities, keep the peace between musicians with
prima-donna personalities, and race against the clock to get
musicians out of Europe.
Josh Aronson, a pianist as well as a film-maker, has
researched the Huberman story and writes and speaks
about Huberman as if they were good friends, even though
Huberman died in 1947.
“Bronislaw
dreamed of
creating a
world-class
orchestra in
Palestine and
saving these
musicians
from the
dangers the
Nazis were
unleashing
on European
Jewry.”
Huberman was an eccentric genius who held a position
in the first half of the twentieth century that great artists
are no longer afforded. He was a friend to royalty, high
society and intellectuals. Einstein helped him raise money.
Toscanini cancelled all arrangements to conduct the 1936
season. World leaders met with him.
Against all obstacles and by sheer force of their
personalities, Bronislaw and Ida managed to create the
Palestine Symphony in 1936 and saved close to one
thousand Jews from the Holocaust. In 1948 the orchestra
became the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO), the peak
of Israeli high culture.
Aronson recounts this almost forgotten chapter of history
with the immediacy of a thriller and the research of an
academic treatise.
Huberman deserves to be recovered from a forgotten past,
celebrated by Israelis and Jews around the world, and
thanked for the achievements of the IPO. ■
Orchestra of Exiles: The Story of Bronislaw Huberman, The Israel Philharmonic, and the One Thousand Jews He Saved From
Nazi Horror by Josh Aronson and Denise George. Published by
Berkley Books – 370 pages.