Solovieff, Miriam, 1921-2003

Miriam Solovieff was born in San Francisco and began piano lessons from the age of three; she began violin lessons with Robert Pollack at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 1939, Solovieff saw her father shot her mother, her younger sister, and finally himself; she escaped unharmed. Just six weeks after she gave a concert with works by Mozart, Vivaldi and Alexander Glazunov in the Town Hall in Manhattan, which was postponed for only two weeks and which received positive reviews.

In 1944 she married William Reuben. In the summer of 1945, the singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson, a family friend, invited her on the first racially integrated tour by the U.S.O. (United Service Organizations), making 32 stops, including at the liberated Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. In the 1950s, Solovieff settled in Paris as a violin teacher.