Repair Shop fix for instrument Nazis forced grandad to play...

Silent for decades... the Holocaust violin

- BY MARK JEFFERIES Showbiz Editor

THE violin lies in pieces, broken, just like the heart of the Jewish musician forced to play it in a Nazi concentration camp.

Siegmund Feitl had to perform at a show camp to con the world into thinking Jews were being well treated.

The experience scarred him for life and, after gaining his freedom, he never touched the instrument again.

Last night the broken, dried-out and cracked violin was handed to Repair Shop expert Becky Houghton.

The restorer, who will try to fix it, said: "I don't think I have ever held anything in my hands with such a poignant and sad history. I'd like it to have a really happy future."

Siegmund, born in 1876 in Vienna, would entertain the city's nightclub crowds until Germany invaded Austria in 1938.

He was among 140,000 Jews, artists and intellectuals taken to Theresienstadt in what is now the Czech Republic. There, Siegmund was ordered to form an orchestra.