This violin was given to Violins of Hope by Moshe Amiran. While living in Santiago, Chile in the 1970s, Amiran met a poor older man, an immigrant from Eastern Europe who had survived the war and found shelter in Chile. One day the man asked Amiran to buy his old violin and he agreed, visiting the man’s home. While there, the man showed Amiran the tattooed number on his arm, and told him of his time in a labor camp and in Auschwitz II Birkenau. The man had somehow survived the camps with his precious violin, a gift he had received from his grandfather as a child. This violin, however, is not a real violin and does not make any sound. This type of violin usually belonged to beggars who pretended to play but actually sang the music instead.