Earlier this week, I posted about the “Sages of Chelm,” in connection with a piece of music bearing that name by Matthew H. Fields. In Yiddish lore, the citizens of Chelm, Poland, were notorious for their batty solutions to everyday problems. This Chelm is a kind of never-never land that charms with its inevitably ironic punchlines.

There is nothing light-hearted, however, about the real-life fate of the citizens of Chelm, who were liquidated during World War II. Most of the 18,000 Jews living there were murdered by the Nazis.

The violinist Ida Haendel was born in Chelm on this date in 1928, only a decade before the death marches and extermination camps were implemented. To say that Haendel was a gifted prodigy is an understatement. She won the Warsaw Conservatory’s Gold Medal and first Huberman Prize in 1933, at the age of five, for her performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. At seven, she was competing against David Oistrakh and Ginette Neveu, about twenty years her senior, to become a laureate of the first Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition. Soon, she was studying in Paris with legendary pedagogues Carl Flesch and George Enescu.

During WWII she employed her talent to help boost the morale of British and American troops and factory workers. In 1937, she made her first appearance at the Proms. She went on to perform at the Proms no less than 68 times.

Internationally, she played with many of the great conductors, drawing particular acclaim for a recording of the Sibelius Concerto. Sibelius personally wrote her to say, “I congratulate you on the great success, but most of all I congratulate myself, that my concerto has found an interpreter of your rare standard.” In all, her recordings span some 70 years.

In 2006, she played before Pope Benedict XVI at the former concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The organizers suggested that she play something Jewish. Instead, she chose Handel’s prayer from the “Dettingen Te Deum.” The work was arranged by her teacher, Carl Flesch.

Haendel was extremely fortunate in that her talent allowed her to escape the fate of so many of her townspeople. Today, she is 90 years-old. Happy birthday, Ida Haendel.

More about Ida Haendel:

http://www.interlude.hk/front/great-women-artists-shaped-music-vi-ida-haendel/