Wladyslaw Szpilman’s The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939—45 was first published in Polish in 1946 and was originally entitled Death of a City. It did not enjoy a long shelf life, as Wolf Biermann explains in the epilogue, because
as the countries conquered by the Red Army gradually became more firmly caught in the stranglehold of their liberators, the nomenklatura of Eastern Europe in general were unable to tolerate such authentic eyewitness accounts as this book. They contained too many painful truths about the collaboration of defeated Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians and Jews with the German Nazis.
The Pianist would not be published again until fifty years after its original publication. In The Pianist, Szpilman shares how he managed to survive in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. It is now published with extracts of the German Captain Wilm Hosenfeld’s diary.
Before the war, Szpilman lives with his family and works for the Polish Radio as a pianist. He recalls how everyone knows war with Germany is coming. People wonder what will happen. Szpilman recalls that
arguments were drawn from the experiences of the Great War, and there was a general feeling that the sole purpose of that conflict had been to show us how to conduct the present one better, and do it properly this time.
Many men leave to fight the Germans, but Szpilman and his family stay behind in the ghetto, thinking that “whatever happened, it was better to be together.” The Poles are defeated and the city begins to change. Shops are closed and garbage begins to pile up. Szpilman recalls the happiness his family feels when they hear on the radio that England has joined the war. The Germans might be victorious now, but people take heart in the hope that the Germans will be defeated quickly.
After Warsaw surrenders on the 27th of September 1939, the Germans take control of the city. Proclamations soon are posted that promise
the population peaceful working conditions and the care of the German state. There was a special section devoted to the Jews: they were guaranteed all their rights, the inviolability of their property, and that their lives would be absolutely secure.
The race raids...
(The entire section is 2091 words.)
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