The Pianist (Film Tie-in edition): The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-45

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Wladyslaw Szpilman

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Pages: 224 (Paperback)

ISBN: 0753814056

Pub: Phoenix

Pub date: 2002-12-31

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 19906

Editorial Review:

The last live broadcast on Polish Radio, on September 23, 1939, was Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp Minor, played by a young pianist named Wladyslaw Szpilman, until his playing was interrupted by German shelling. It was the same piece, and the same pianist, when broadcasting resumed six years later. The Pianist is Szpilman's account of the years in between, of the death and cruelty inflicted on the Jews of Warsaw and on Warsaw itself, related with a dispassionate restraint borne of shock. Szpilman, now 88, has not looked at his description since he wrote it in 1946 (the same time as Primo Levi's If This Is A Man?; it is too personally painful. The rest of us have no such excuse. Szpilman's family were deported to Treblinka, where they were exterminated; he survived only because a music-loving policeman recognised him. This was only the first in a series of fatefully lucky escapes that littered his life as he hid among the rubble and corpses of the Warsaw Ghetto, growing thinner and hungrier, yet condemned to live. Ironically, it was a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who saved Szpilman's life by bringing food and an eiderdown to the derelict ruin where he discovered him. Hosenfeld died seven years later in a Stalingrad labour camp, but portions of his diary, reprinted here, tell of his outraged incomprehension of the madness and evil he witnessed, thereby establishing an effective counterpoint to ground the nightmarish vision of the pianist in a desperate reality. Szpilman originally published his account in Poland in 1946, but it was almost immediately withdrawn by Stalin's Polish minions as it unashamedly described collaborations by Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and Jews with the Nazis. In 1997 it was published in Germany after Szpilman's son found it on his father's bookcase. This admirably robust translation by Anthea Bell is the first in the English language. There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before the Nazi occupation; after it there were 240,000.Wladyslaw Szpilman's extraordinary account of his own miraculous survival offers a voice across the years for the faceless millions who lost their lives. --David Vincent

Reader Reviews:

Astonishing (0/0 people found this helpful)

I bought this book purely on the strength of seeing the excellent movie of the same name.I can honestly say that it is amongst the top ten books I have ever read.I,like many other people,have caught glimpses of what it must of been like to be a Jew during the second world war especially in German occupied countries.I have always thought to myself that it must have been a living nightmare.I was wrong,it must have been far worse than that.

Wladyslaw Szpilman describes here the true horror of life as a Jew in a truly descriptive but never angry way.His story is almost beyond belief at times and you wonder how the hell he survived.As he tells his story you are left wondering just how he managed to escape the nazi's time after time.Lucky?It seems rather churlish to call him lucky as he endured almost six years of a living hell on a daily basis.He also lost his entire family.Father,Mother,brother and two sisters all murdered.But there is no doubt that he needed massive amounts of luck to survive.He tells his story in a calm way which is a surprise as he wrote this book very soon after the war.Perhaps the full shock of everything he had witnessed was still too raw,maybe he kept his true feelings intact to keep control of his anger.He tells his story brilliantly and describes scenes of horror in a calm way which almost adds to their sheer brutality.
Have no doubts,this must be one of the most telling accounts of war ever wriiten.It isn't about the concentration camps,he wasn't there so can only comment on the rumours he heard.It is about life in Warsaw,life in the ghetto and it is incredibly sad but also a tribute to human survival.

Also featured in this book are brief extracts from the diary of German officer Wolf Biermann.This is a man that helped Szpilman despite the fact that he took an enormous risk in doing so.What also emerges is the fact that he helped several Jews during the war but was destined for his life to end tragically.He could be called another innocent victim amongst the many millions but here is the chance to see what a fine man he was.

This is a book about two remarkable men.Read it.It is quite simply a brilliant book about the horrors of war.

Account of life and death in the Warsaw Ghetto (0/0 people found this helpful)

The Pianist is the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman and his remarkable story survival in Warsaw during the years of Nazi occupation from 1939 to 1945.
It tells how he survived against the odds , hiding in various parts of the city , before his life was saved by a German officer , who despised the Nazis brutality and genocide , a true righteous gentile , Captain Wilm Hosenfeld.
Unlike many personal holocaust accounts , which are of concentration and death camps , this one is an account of life and death in the Warsaw ghetto.
Szpilman describes life and death in the ghetto : the disease , the starvation and the Nazi mass murders of hundreds of thousands of men , women and children , including how the Nazis killed Jewish children , by seizing them by the legs and swinging their heads into brick walls.

Next to Szpilman's account are moving extracts from Hosenfeld's diary.

In his diary Wilm Hosenfeld described his conscience and his hatred of totalitarian brutality , describing the horrors of the French Revolution and the horrific atrocities of the Bolshevik revolution , who'se leaders and footsoldiers acted without compassion or conscience , believing in the totality and infinite importance of their causes. It was a war against Christianity and against descency , as was the Nazi war to destroy the Jews and other entire nations. He speaks of the total moral bankruptcy of Nazism and his disgust at it's rotten moral core and bloodthirsty savage evil.

Hosenfeld was captured by the Soviets after the war and died seven years later in a hideous Soviet Gulag.

Similarly voices of conscience have arisen from time to time against evil systems , such as Andrei Sakharov , who challenged the ultimate tyranny of the Soviet Union and more recently Walid Shoebat , a former Arab terorist turned Christian apostle of love and co-existence , who now condemmns Arab terror , and the war of destruction and hideous propaganda against Israel.

In the epilogue by Wolf Biermann , Biermann describes how "everyone knows how horribly the infection of anti-Semitism traditionally raged among 'the Poles' , but few know that at the same time no other nation hid so many Jews from the Nazis. If you hid a Jew in France , the penalty was prison , or a concentration camp , in Germany it cost you your life - but in Poland it cost the lives of your entire family".

Lastly Hosenfeld makes the plea that a tree is planted at Yad Vashem in the honor of Wilm Hosenfeld , among those of the thousands of other righteous gentiles honoured at the holocaust museum in Jerusalem.

Miracle in Warsaw (2/2 people found this helpful)

As quite a few reviewers did, I read this book after watching the film. I found the book, as I do most holocaust based books, to be horrific, sad and terribly tragic. Wladyslaw Szpilman is a pianist working for a Polish radio station when Poland falls to the German invaders in 1939. The subsequent segregation and systematic annihilation of the Warsaw Jews is then described with Szpilman and his family being the obvious fulcrum of the story.

Szpilman describes in depth the formation of the Jewish Ghetto, the Ghetto uprising, the Warsaw uprising, the `relocation' of his family to the gas chambers, the beatings, shootings and the random murder of so many of his race. A story of pure savagery that even after so many books, films and documentaries still shocks the reader to the core.

The main theme of this book however concerns the miraculous survival of the author. He is picked out from the `relocation' queue by an old friend who is now a Jewish Ghetto policeman and then embarks on a hide and seek escapade through various safe houses in Warsaw. Living with an instant death sentence if discovered, Szpilman is hidden at these various locations for weeks at a time, always alone and often without food. Eventually in the courageous Warsaw uprising the author is forced to take refuge in an abandoned building which catches fire, he is then discovered by the Germans and shot at but escapes. In what is a virtually a now abandoned Warsaw he takes refuge in other abandoned buildings and is eventually caught in one foraging for food by a German Captain namely Wilm Hosenfeld. Expecting the worse Szpilman finds the opposite and his life is saved by this kind and honourable German officer. Hosenfeld befriends Szpilman, hides him, feeds him and provides him warm clothing. Hosenfeld then disappears from the story when the Russians enter Warsaw and the Germans retreat. However the story has a twist as Hosenfeld gets taken prisoner by the Russians and in the post war period Szpilman finds this out and tries to find Hosenfeld to barter for his release. Alas this humanitarian Captain dies in a Russian prison camp in the early 1950's.

A sad but miraculous story, sometime told in quite a banal matter of fact matter with not much emotion....but it is said in the book that the author wrote the book immediately after the war ended...after so much horror I doubt if the author had any emotion left!

The pianist (2/3 people found this helpful)

I bought this book after having watched the award winning film version featuring Adrien Brody,and what a read it is.
Not much i can add to Amazon's own review other than to say that if you enjoyed the film you will love the book.
The film version is my favourite of it's kind and the horrors that Wladyslaw Szpilman,his family and the Jewish in general went through must have been horrific to say the least.
This book captures those horrors even more so,plus you get a more detailed insight into the man himself.
A fantastic read that often has you pausing for thought,trying to grasp just what he must have gone through,but once you start reading you will find it hard to stop,it is THAT good a read.

A gripping, thought provoking book (7/8 people found this helpful)

This was a thoroughly gripping and thought provoking book. Once you start to read it you are unable to put it down. The events described are incredibly powerful and you are left amazed at what humans can suffer and still survive. This book has the capacity to move you like few about the holocaust and the life of the Jews in ww2 can. Essential reading in this genre.

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