This week's post are captures that technically are not outstanding but one's that I am glad I had the oppurtunity to capture. The gentleman in these captures is my youngest son's 80 year old violin instructor, Fritz. Fritz was born in Germany and survived the horrors of World War II. As a 10 year old boy in 1939 Fritz was part of the "Hitler Youth" and could have easily progressed through the system to become a German soldier. Even at that age his Faith told him that the things he was witnessing were wrong and he became less and less involved in the youth program. By luck and timing he was not quite old enough to see active duty but his story of surviving the war as a German are quite amazing. He was seperated from his family, was captured and beaten by both German soldiers as a traitor and Russian soldiers because he was German. His father was actaully a POW in Russia for 2 years. The hardships endured and atrocities witnessed by him and his family are truly unbelievable. His family ultimately reunited and settled in a different part of Germany were he started music school. They ultimately immigrated to the United States in 1950 when Fritz was 21. Fritz learned English as a US citizen and ultimately received his masters degree in music eductation. He married, raised a family and taught at the high school and college level until retirement. He has given private lessons to many of the local violinists. He had retired from this as well but we asked him to work with our son and he agreed.
Fritz has been giving a presentation of his life experience to various groups locally as our ancestors are primarily German. My son played some duets with him after he finished his talk. At yesterday's presentation Fritz mentioned that this would probably be the last time as it is just too emotional for him to relive the things he has endured.
Fritz is truly an amazing man and my son just admires him. Fritz is tough but always encouraging and really motivates my son. As my Roy always says, after hearing Fritz's life story it is pretty difficult to come up with a good reason for not practicing!
The captures were taken at pretty high ISO in poor lighting so a bit noisy and I wish I had a longer lens with me. I plan this spring, to go to his studio and get some better captures of the two of them.
