Violins of Hope Read online

  “No, I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he audaciously replied.

  When Ernst disembarked at Romedal, he and four other escapees were whisked away in Thorleif Bronken’s taxi. They were driven to a small schoolhouse in Åsbygda, where a teacher named Kjellaug Herset lived. The escapees hid in the schoolhouse attic for two nights, maintaining complete silence during the days. If Herset’s Nazi colleague heard something fall on the floor, a bed squeak, or any other noise overhead, it could have meant their deaths. On the second night, Kjellaug’s fiancé Lars Sagberg informed the escapees that he would take them by truck to the Glomma River, which runs near the Swedish border. They would cross the river on a barge. Another guide would help them finish the journey over the mountainous terrain on foot.

  A few weeks before helping Ernst and the other four refugees get to the Glomma, Sagberg had met with another group of escapees in the schoolhouse. The nine refugees had gathered around a radio listening to the BBC, whose broadcasts had been forbidden. After Sagberg changed the channel to the Nazi-controlled station in Oslo, they all heard a declaration that anyone who helped Jews escape the country would receive the death penalty. The escapees bristled and looked at Sagberg nervously.

  “Oh, that makes no difference,” he assured them.

  “Doesn’t it frighten you to hear that there is a death penalty for helping a Jew, when there are nine of us?” one refugee asked Herset.

  “That makes nine death penalties,” she responded defiantly.

  “This is something we have heard several times before, so we’re not worried,” Sagberg confirmed.75

  After crossing the Glomma, Ernst and the other escapees in his convoy were taken to a log cabin. During their second night at the cabin, they started their journey on foot. A farmer followed behind the group on a horse and sled to cover their tracks. After several hours of walking through the snowy night, they arrived at another log cabin, where they were given food and coffee. Cold, wet, and tired, they were hoping to find a warm place to rest, but the log cabin was unheated. So they continued their journey. They did not find another log cabin until 1 a.m. the next day.

  Ernst was exhausted. He was in no shape for this type of physical activity. One of his knees had become so stiff from overuse that it would no longer move. He fashioned a cane to assist him the rest of the way. He was also freezing. Other than the long coat he had brought with him, he was not properly dressed for hiking in the snow. He was given a raincoat, but he was so short that the coat dragged on the ground when he walked. To make matters worse, when he placed his soaked ski boots next to the fire to dry them, they shrank so much that he could not put them back on.

  On the next day, a third guide rowed the refugees across a lake to Sweden. Ernst made his way to Stockholm, where he knew he would have the best chance of earning a living through playing the violin. He also intended to take the letter from Christie to the Norwegian legation. It was only later that Ernst opened the letter to find that it contained not a coded message but money. It was the same amount that Ernst had held in his bank account in Norway. It was his to spend.

  Ernst’s wife Kari and their daughters fled to Sweden a few weeks after him. Warned of impending danger by the girls’ schoolteachers, they escaped Oslo just as the Nazis started rounding up women and children. Although Kari would have been considered an Aryan by Germany’s Nuremberg Laws, Quisling’s severe interpretations of Jewishness would have included her for being married to a Jew. She and her daughters—who despite having been christened would be considered Jewish by virtue of having a Jewish father—would have been arrested, deported to Auschwitz, and sent directly to the gas chambers.

  At first, Kari and the girls traveled north, just as Ernst had done. They hid on a farm in Hamar for three weeks before being sent back to Oslo. After returning to the capital city, they continued traveling south. When they reached the southeastern Norwegian border town of Ørje, they walked in the rain toward the Swedish border with twelve other women and children.

  After becoming separated from their guide and getting lost in the forest, they arrived at a farm the next morning. Approaching the farmhouse could have meant walking right into the arms of Nazi sympathizers, but Kari had no choice. By this time, seven-year-old Liv and nine-year-old Berit were too cold and exhausted to continue any farther.

  Kari knocked on the door. When an old woman answered, Kari blurted out that they were refugees on their way to Sweden who had gotten lost. The old woman proved to be friendly. She informed them that they were still in Norway, and had been heading in the wrong direction. She invited them in for coffee and told them, “You must not stay here for longer than an hour, because there are inspections here every morning.

  “But you are not far from the border,” she assured Kari. “My husband will guide you across.”

  After struggling to wake the exhausted children, Kari and the girls continued their journey. She and her daughters joined Ernst in Stockholm on December 19.

  Ernst’s parents had an even more difficult odyssey. They had escaped Nazi Germany just a few years earlier and were now fleeing a second country. Exhausted and freezing in the Norwegian winter, the elderly couple could not keep up with their transport. There were Germans in the same forest that night with dogs and guns searching for two deserters, but the elder Glasers simply could not run anymore. They found a stump in the forest and sat down. Their guide did not realize that they had fallen behind until much later. He brought the rest of the group to the border and went back to Norway for the Glasers. When he found them later that night, they were sitting by themselves in the woods, holding hands, expecting to die together. Instead, he brought them safely to Sweden.

  Sweden

  In Stockholm, Ernst used his contacts to establish a new life. He and his family stayed with old friends who owned an antiquarian bookstore. He borrowed a violin from the son-in-law of the late concertmaster of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. It was not until several months later that Ernst would be reunited with his Guadagnini violin, which Geldmacher smuggled into Sweden hidden in a suitcase full of clothes.

  When Ernst visited the Swedish Music Society, he was told that he was free to give concerts, but that as a refugee he was ineligible for steady employment. In the spring of 1943 he was nevertheless hired by Georg Schnéevoigt, the Finnish conductor who had led Ernst’s last concert in Oslo. Schnéevoigt was the principal conductor of the symphony in Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city after Stockholm and Gothenburg. Despite strict regulations that only Swedes could be hired for paid positions, Schnéevoigt was able to use his considerable influence to not only appoint Ernst as the orchestra’s substitute concertmaster, but also to get Ernst a job teaching at the music conservatory in Malmö.

  While Ernst was playing with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, the ensemble brought in the famous Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad as a soloist. Flagstad was one of the greatest opera singers of the twentieth century, but was also suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer. At issue was her decision to ignore an unspoken boycott by returning to Nazi-occupied Norway to be with her husband. This in itself might have been forgivable were it not for her husband’s ties to Quisling’s National Union Party.

  “You must know our concertmaster,” Schnéevoigt told Flagstad when she arrived in Malmö. “He was the first violinist of your orchestra in Oslo. He fled your country a short time ago.”

  “Of course, I know who he is. He played several times for me in the orchestra. I’m so happy to hear he’s all right. Isn’t he a splendid musician?”

  “An excellent one,” Schnéevoigt concurred, adding that Ernst was still a little shaken by his stressful escape from Norway.

  “I can well understand that. I’d very much like to say hello to him. Could you let him know?”

  “Gladly.”

  Flagstad waited and waited for Ernst to appear, but he never showed up.

  During the concert, she was pleased to find that Ernst’s playing was still in top form
. At the end, she shook his hand and thanked him for playing. “I want to talk to you,” she whispered.

  Ernst nodded politely, but he did not go to see her after the concert.

  Later, when Ernst finally visited Flagstad, he was rather distant.

  “How are you?” she asked. “I’m so happy to see you here and all right.”

  Ernst did not respond.

  “Your friends have been worried about you in Norway,” Flagstad continued. “And now I can tell them that you are happy and well in Sweden. Is there anything I can do for you in Norway?”

  “No,” he quietly replied. “Nothing.”

  “There must be some relatives I can call up for you,” Flagstad volunteered.76 It was only after she confided in Ernst that her brother had been helping a desperate Jewish colleague in Norway that Ernst finally smiled and asked her to make some inquiries on his behalf.

  Playing the violin provided Ernst with the opportunity to support his family throughout their exile. He was even able to send his children to an excellent boarding school near Stockholm. With his daughters tucked safely away, Ernst was free to tour throughout Sweden, often collaborating with Kari. In their performances in Sweden, Ernst and Kari promoted Norwegian music, specifically compositions by Grieg. In a concert in Stockholm on October 17, 1943, Kari played Grieg’s beloved piano concerto. Less than two weeks later in Gothenburg, Ernst and Kari gave an all-Grieg recital that included a sonata for violin and piano, some songs, and Ernst’s transcription of the quintessentially Norwegian “Solveig’s Song” from Peer Gynt. The Glasers also toured schools, playing Norwegian folksongs and teaching the Swedish children about Norwegian history and culture.

  Ernst and Kari would often perform alongside other well-known Norwegian artists at benefit concerts to raise money for Swedish Aid for Norway. A local aid committee somewhere in Sweden would call the Norwegian legation in Stockholm seeking entertainment for a fund-raising event. The educational office would see who was available, and dispatch performers accordingly. The performers were each given a modest allowance of twenty kroner per day for their food, travel, and lodging.

  Over time, the refugees started performing more and more for the “Boys in the Woods.” These brave young men were Norwegian freedom fighters who had gathered in camps along the Swedish border. Under the pretext of undergoing instruction as a reserve police force, the Boys in the Woods were actually receiving military training from the Norwegian resistance movement in preparation for their country’s liberation from the Nazis. The performances by Ernst and the other Norwegian artists provided comfort to the Boys in the Woods while also reminding the homesick young men of what they were training to protect. Ernst took great pride in contributing to the Norwegian cause and giving back to his fellow countrymen. “It was good to be able to do something for our boys,” he later explained.77

  The performance environments in the camps could hardly be considered ideal. Cabaret musician Robert Levin later recalled performing on a piano that was strapped to the back of a truck for easy transport from camp to camp. One outdoor performance was so cold that his fingers froze stiff, causing him to make all kinds of mistakes. In that particular performance, he was accompanying Norwegian soprano Randi Heide Steen. When a gust of wind blew snow into Steen’s mouth, she nearly choked to death. At a different camp, Levin encountered a piano that was missing its sustain pedal. Throughout the entire performance, Levin worked the piano keys while journalist and author Leif Borthen played the role of the missing pedal. Crouched underneath the piano, Borthen would release the damper mechanism every time Levin would put his right foot down and return it whenever Levin would lift his foot. This time it was not the cold weather but his own laughing that made it difficult for Levin to play.

  The willingness of Norway’s greatest artists to travel up and down Sweden performing in such wretched conditions astounded and inspired the Boys in the Woods. One freedom fighter later recalled trudging through the camp in Öreryd one drizzly, cold evening in May 1944 and stopping dead in his tracks upon hearing the sound of a violin playing. After weeks of training in the rough forest terrain, the young soldier had completely forgotten what great music sounded like.

  He followed the sound to an officers’ barracks, where he immediately recognized Ernst. The Norwegian legend was warming up by playing “Zapateado,” from Pablo de Sarasate’s extraordinarily difficult Spanish Dances, op. 23. Kari was sitting peacefully beside him darning socks.

  When the soldier learned that Ernst would be playing in the camp that night, he immediately assumed that the virtuoso violinist would be playing repertoire as advanced as “Zapateado.”

  “Surely you’re not going to serve that one up tonight!” he cautioned. “You’ll be booed off!” He suggested that Ernst would be more successful playing Norwegian folksongs for the unsophisticated soldiers.

  “Snob!” Ernst retorted. “Silly fool! I know these guys. I’ve been playing in Norwegian barracks and camps throughout Sweden since I came here in 1942, and I know what they want. They want good stuff, my friend! There’s no point in cheating.” Ernst admitted that the most complex works might not be appropriate for an audience of Boys in the Woods, but he promised to compensate for that by limiting his repertoire to the works of their countrymen. “Let’s take our pick of Norwegians and there are plenty of great works they would be happy with,” he continued. “Right, Kari?”78

  Kari simply nodded, and continued her darning.

  Ernst and Kari had long since figured out how to entertain the Boys in the Woods, including those who had never been exposed to classical music before. To appeal to their new audience, they did indeed make sure to include some popular compositions in their repertoire. But they also felt an obligation to avoid watering down their programs too much. They wanted to not only inspire the soldiers, but also educate them. They underscored this approach by prefacing the classical works by Grieg and other Norwegian composers with spoken introductions and with poems read by Norwegian writers. They called these presentations “Journeys Through Norway in Poetry and Sound.”

  The air was filled with excitement for the Glasers’ performance in the Öreryd camp. The Boys in the Woods always looked forward to their weekly entertainment. This time, the gray monotony of camp life would be lifted by none other than the concertmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic and his piano-playing wife. Although the soldiers may have been a little baffled by Johan Svendsen’s complex Romance for Violin, they showed their appreciation at the end of the concert with a rousing ovation. Unlike the reserved, genteel applause preferred by Oslo’s concertgoing elite, the Boys in the Woods responded to the performance by clapping their hands, stamping their feet, hitting the walls, and shouting “hurrah!”79

  The Norwegian performers became very close friends while traveling all over Sweden performing for Swedish Aid for Norway and for the Boys in the Woods. Ernst, Levin, and two other artists formed an especially intimate circle that they called the Philosophy Club. After each benefit concert, they would be invited to extravagant parties that they suspected cost more than the proceeds from the performance. Whoever had the largest hotel room would host the rest of the club after the party so they could recap that evening’s escapades. They talked and laughed for hours.

  It was during this time that Ernst began to rediscover his Jewish heritage. Like many German Jews of the early twentieth century, he and his parents had always thought of themselves exclusively as German and had given little thought to Judaism. But Ernst became compelled to explore the language and traditions of his ancestors by his experiences during the Holocaust, as well as through the deep connection that he forged with Levin, who had been a devout Jew his entire life. Ernst started studying Hebrew with Levin. He would bring a Hebrew-language copy of the Old Testament with him on tours so he and Levin could read it together on the train. Ernst’s proficiency in the language became so strong that Levin later started referring translation questions to him.

  On October 25, 1944, the n
ortheastern town of Kirkenes became the first Norwegian locality to be liberated by the Russians. At the request of the Norwegian legation, Levin composed a Kirkenes March to celebrate the historic event, set to a new text by Norwegian playwright Arild Feldborg. A few days later, Levin conducted the march’s premiere in Järvsö, Sweden, where Norwegian military commander Olaf Helset had just completed a major maneuver with five thousand armed and uniformed Norwegian soldiers. It was a momentous occasion that signaled that the Boys in the Woods had evolved from a motley collection of refugees into a full-fledged military operation that would soon be ready to cross back into Norway. Ernst played the violin and also helped Levin arrange several Norwegian folksongs for the celebration.

  Return to Norway

  Ernst and Kari returned to Oslo immediately after the end of the war. Unlike half of Norway’s prewar Jewish population, their family had survived the Holocaust. Most of their personal belongings had also been miraculously safeguarded. The arrest orders of October 26, 1942, had come with instructions to confiscate all Jewish property, especially valuables, jewelry, and cash. But when Ernst and Kari returned to their apartment, they found only their grand piano and three chairs missing. These items were quickly returned, thanks to a decree the Norwegian government-in-exile had issued from London in 1942 guaranteeing that all belongings appropriated during the war would be returned to their original owners.

  Ernst also resumed his post as concertmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic. On December 6, 1945, he even returned to Bergen to perform Jean Sibelius’s First Violin Concerto—on Ole Bull’s Violin. It was the first time he had touched the instrument since his canceled appearance in Bergen almost five years earlier. The entire affair had robbed him of his interest in playing that particular instrument, but the opportunity to finally play Ole Bull’s Violin in Bergen allowed him to put the circumstances of his previous trip to Bergen behind him.