Berkeley vet was a hero in WWII — with his violin
Young soldier in 1945 goes from front lines to playing concert for Truman, Stalin
Stuart Canin made sure to pack up his violin when he was shipped off to Europe as a rifleman in World War II. When the 19-year-old trudged up the gangplank of a troopship in New York harbor with his rifle in one hand and his violin case in the other, his commanding officer asked, “What are you going to do with that thing?” Canin shrugged and responded, “You never know.”
Turns out it came in handy. In July 1945, when the Big Three
— President Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin — convened in Potsdam, Germany, to determine the fate of the world, Truman broke the ice with a classical music recital. That day Canin, along with a fellow soldier who played piano, went from the front lines to playing a prelude to history.
“When you’re 19, you don’t think about history,” says the white-haired Canin, now 90, sitting in the cozy living room of his Berkeley house. “You just think ‘ wow.’ They told us to get shined up and play and that’s what we did.”
Canin’s story is revisited in Sam Ball’s “The Rifleman’s Violin,” a haunting documentary that’s the centerpiece of the Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival, which runs through Nov. 20. The Nov. 12 screening of the documentary, which includes a live concert by Canin and pianist Helene Wickett, is sold out, but the film will soon be available online as part of the Stuart Canin archive at Stanford at www.potsdamrevisited.org.
“There’s a real hunger for this story because it’s so compelling,” says filmmaker Sam Ball. “People like Stuart were called upon to fight for something. You have to honor that by remembering it. He was part of a momentous event in world history.”
Canin will never forget the devastation of that time, the fields strewn with corpses rotting in the sun, the once grand cities reduced to rubble. He took many chilling photos of Berlin in ruins, including shots of Hitler’s crumbling chancellery, which are now part of the Stanford archive.
“Anyone who lived through those years will never forget them,” Canin says. “It was a war in which everybody fought. Nobody didn’t fight. We were all in it together.”
The violinist was lucky; the war ended a few months after he landed in Europe. He was posted to a new troop, the 6817th Soldiers’ Show Company. Alongside actor Mickey Rooney and pianist Eugene List, he entertained wounded GIs in hospitals and barracks throughout a devastated Europe. Then history came calling. Canin and company were told to report to Potsdam.
“Truman said, ‘Gentlemen, play something.’ So we played,” Canin says. “Truman was worried about measuring up to FDR. He thought a concert would help ease the tension.”
Not all of the performers were tapped for that historic occasion. Rooney, for one, didn’t make the cut. Only Canin and List performed that day.
“They made Mickey stay in the tent because they thought his humor wouldn’t translate well,” recalls Canin with a chuckle. “If you’ve never spent a week in a tent with Mickey Rooney, you haven’t lived. Funniest man I’ve ever met.”
The rifleman will also never forget watching the three titans arrive. He remembers Stalin with “his big round head and big walrus mustache” and Churchill with his “3-footlong cigar.” The pressure to please these gentlemen was crushing. The concert began after dinner and they played again during breaks in negotiations.
“Boy, was I nervous. I have never been that nervous in all my years of performance,” says Canin, who went on to play with the San Francisco Symphony (where he was concertmaster 1970-80) and the New Century Chamber Orchestra Los Angeles Opera after his tour of duty. “Until I put my fiddle to my neck. Then I was all right.”
As for the audience, Truman sat in the middle, Stalin on his left and Churchill on his right. There were some tense moments, such as when Canin ducked behind the piano to grab his violin case and one of Stalin’s soldiers flew across the room at him. When he saw the violin, he stood down. The program began with Fritz Kreisler’s famed Praeludium & Allegro and included other works by Kreisler, Henryk Wieniawski and Manuel de Falla.
Then List had the bright idea to play some Tchaikovsky, and that soothed Stalin’s frayed nerves.
“Stalin had been stonefaced throughout,” recalls Canin, “and then once he heard the Tchaikovsky, he got to his feet, grabbed the vodka and shouted, ‘A toast to the musicians!’ ”
Much was at stake as those three giants sat on a love seat and let the music wash over them. Canin learned later that Truman found out about the atomic bomb tests during the Potsdam conference. The future of the world was hanging in the air.
“That was the ace up Truman’s sleeve,” says Canin, who also served as a concertmaster for Hollywood films such as “Jurassic Park” and “Forrest Gump.” “He knew he could end the war.”
The violinist will never know exactly what impact the music had on the politics, but he knows it was his destiny to play his part. The president thanked him with an autographed picture that he signed “To an excellent violinist, Private First Class Stuart Canin, Harry Truman.”
The veteran is quick to point out that he didn’t really have a choice about bringing his violin when he went off to war. He has been playing since he was 5 and the instrument is simply part of him. At 90, his joints may be stiffer than they once were, but he still plays every day.
“I can’t be without it,” he says, gesturing to his violin. “I’m not myself without it.”