Shimon Walt

Faculty, Fountain School of Performing Arts

When you cut the uniform off to stop their bleeding or whatever it is, they are all the same people – you don’t know the difference.

I was born in Russia, which is now Lithuania because the borders keep shifting, in Vilinius to a Jewish family. My immediate family was very small. A handful of us. I was born after the war in 1951. My brother was born in ’46. I would say 90-some per cent of my family were all killed in the Holocaust in the concentration camps. My parents would never talk about them. My parents never wanted to talk about the war time, period. It took my wife, Peggy, here in this house with my dad — who is not with us anymore — visiting and my mom’s few visits to get it out of them. For some reason, it was easier to get them to start telling her the story than me.

We knew we had to get out. It was a very anti-Semitic period in Polish history. Both my brothers and I were beaten up at school. Very plainly they told us it was because we were Jews. My brother had his knee dented with a metal pipe. I was beaten up by three kids from my school bad enough that I had to be taken to hospital for a few days. I remember that very well. I was probably in Grade 1 or 2. My brother had to carry me because I couldn’t really walk. Those kids, their punishment, was to come to the school and say I’m sorry. That was it.

I was 16 when we went to Israel. As you can imagine at that time in Israel in 1966, it was a very young country. It was born in ’48. So we landed on a landing strip at the airport, which now is a gorgeous airport, surrounded by nothing but sand and 40-some degrees heat. The little hut that controlled immigration, the line ups to get in to go through the hut, and it was hot, hot, hot. That was my first impression. I did not want to be there. But now, it is my home. I mean, Halifax is my home, Canada is my home, but definitely that is in my heart.

I was in the Yom Kippur War. I served as a medic in the tank division. It was hell. When the line needs to be kept, that’s when those tanks are stationed and they don’t move. They are just there, like columns. We were there. It was drilled into us every single morning that our duty as doctors was to treat people based on the severity of their wounds and not the colour of the uniform. We worked with many Egyptian wounded soldiers. Many. Not one, not two. Only the doctor would say you go here, you go there. And when you cut the uniform off to stop their bleeding or whatever it is, they are all the same people — you don’t know the difference.

Shortly after I arrived at Tanglewood, I met a Russian Jewish violinist who came with his family and his friends were playing in the Boston Symphony. We met and spent three or four hours walking around telling jokes. That was in 1974 and he is still one of my very closest friends. He lives in Chicago. It’s for life. You might not talk to each other for five months or for a year, then get on the phone and two hours later it’s like we never parted.

I got my Canadian citizenship. I started planning my future. Do I go back home? I was in Montreal for some reason, and I remember flying home to Halifax at night exhausted. I looked down and saw the lake and the lights around it and the thought crossed my mind: thank goodness I am home. It clicked: this is home.

For me, playing all those functions — sure I’d like to get paid — but the most important thing is making new friends all the time. That’s what life is all about. If people need me for anything, I always will go. It doesn’t matter. Somebody called me and asked ‘so and so loves your playing and is dying in the hospital, would you consider playing for them?’ I said sure. My pianist and I took our instruments and went over to the hospital’s palliative care ward and we played for her. Then a few weeks later, she passed away. I’ve done it for more than one person. And it’s because I want to do it.

It’s a gift somebody from up there. Whoever is up there, believe it or not, gives you a gift. It’s not something you take with you. That’s why I love to teach. I like to share everything that I’ve managed to learn over my career, my life and I like to go where people need me because that’s what’s even more important than playing a concert.

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