Clarinetist Michael Balnemones was born on December 8, 1876, in Polotsk, Belarus, as the eldest of three sons of musician Jankel Balnemones and his wife Chaja, born Teitelbaum. Because he had already been a member of the State Opera orchestra before 1914, he was initially protected from dismissal as a Jew in 1933. However, on December 23, 1935, he was forced into retirement.
How the musician spent the following years remains unclear. In the fall of 1939, however, he managed to escape: from Rotterdam, he traveled on the SS Rotterdam, a passenger liner of the Holland–America Line, to New York, where he arrived on November 22, 1939.
Balnemones appears to have stayed in New York until after the war. He became a US citizen on May 13, 1946. Later, he moved to San Antonio, Texas, and in the 1950s worked as a music instructor at the Catholic St. Mary’s University. Michael Balnemones died on April 9, 1972, in San Antonio.
1876 Polozk
1972 San Antonio, Texas