Goebbel's Violin

Abstract

Broadcast Transcript: Once there was a Japanese violin prodigy named Nejiko Suwa. Born in 1920, Suwa made her debut in 1939, in Paris, just one year before the Nazis invaded. In 1943, while in Berlin, she received a Stradivarius--possibly confiscated by the Reich--from Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. In 1945, Suwa was captured by American forces and was on her way to New York, when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. A few days before Japan surrendered, she was sent to an internment camp in Pennsylvania then, eventually, sent home. Hiding it and holding it under her clothes, she managed to keep that violin with her. In 1951 Suwa became the first Japanese musician to perform in America after the war. She played Mendelssohn which is kind of ironic: Mendelssohn was a composer whose works were banned by the Nazis and she played him on Goebbel's violin. #ceas #hacker #japan