How a Jewish pianist’s extraordinary talent spared him from Auschwitz, inspired a movie 60 years later
On Sept. 23, 1939, the famous Polish-Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman was broadcasting live on Warsaw radio when the studio was blown to pieces by invading Nazi troops. Amid dust and rubble, Szpilman and his family were herded into the Warsaw ghetto but were later separated.Szpilman, alone in the devastated city of Warsaw, engaged in a years-long, torturous game of cat and mouse with the German soldiers. Hidden among the detritus, Szpilman managed to preserve his life; the price he paid was ill-health, starvation, loneliness, and the absence of his beloved piano.
That was until one day, when a patrolling German soldier discovered the starving Jew and instructed him to reveal his profession. Under a heavy veil of uncertainty inside a dilapidated building in war-torn Warsaw, the next few moments would turn out to be the most profound of Szpilman’s remarkable life.
The starving pianist was attempting to cook scraps of foraged food in the ruins of a bombed residence when the German soldier sidled up behind him. Szpilman dropped to the floor, defeated, but when the young soldier asked Szpilman to reveal his profession, the pianist obliged.
There was a piano in the building, miraculously unharmed; at the soldier’s request, Szpilman sat down to play.
“When I had finished,” Szpilman continued, “the silence seemed even gloomier and even more eerie than before. A cat mewed in a street somewhere. I heard a shot down below outside the building, a harsh, loud German noise.
“The officer looked at me in silence. After a while he sighed, and muttered, ‘All the same, you shouldn’t stay here. I‘ll take you out of the city, to a village. You’ll be safer there.’
“I shook my head. ‘I can’t leave this place,’ I said firmly. Only now did he seem to understand my real reason for hiding among the ruins,” Szpilman wrote. The young pianist had revealed his talent but in doing so had also confessed his Jewish heritage.
Szpilman’s fame had spared him the horrors of Auschwitz. After the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland, Szpilman had been bound for a train to Treblinka extermination camp among thousands of fellow Warsaw city dwellers. However, the young pianist was recognized in line for the train, dragged to one side, and allowed back into the ruined city to fend for himself.
Szpilman’s family did not survive the war. They eventually met the same fate as the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people killed in the Treblinka gas chambers.
The young German officer, having heard Szpilman play, reeled with the realization that Szpilman was Jewish. “He started nervously. ‘You’re Jewish?’ he asked. ‘Yes.’ He had been standing with his arms crossed over his chest,” Szpilman wrote in his memoir. “He now unfolded them and sat down in the armchair by the piano, as if this discovery called for lengthy reflection.”
“‘Yes, well,’ he murmured, ‘in that case I see you really can’t leave.’”
Yet rather than exterminating the tormented young pianist on the spot, the German soldier was deeply moved by the magic that emanated from Szpilman’s fingertips. It was a momentary triumph of art over violence, and ultimately, a triumph that would save Szpilman’s life.
As conditions in the Warsaw ghetto worsened, the German guards ruled with an iron fist, inflicting unimaginable cruelty on the Jewish community. Formerly statuesque buildings crumbled into rubble, and starving children were left to die on the streets.
But the German soldier, who was later identified as Wilm Hosenfeld, brought packages of food to the starving pianist until the day the German troops left Warsaw in January of 1945. Hosenfeld met Szpilman one last time, promised he would listen to him on Polish Radio after the war, and gifted him his warm, heavy coat.
Sadly, the two men were never to meet again; Hosenfeld died in 1952 in Soviet captivity.
The film’s most horrifying scenes contrasted powerfully with the brief moment of resolution between Szpilman and Hosenfeld. Their climactic confrontation over a piano and an impromptu rendition of Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor touched hearts and souls around the world.
Szpilman’s account of the extraordinary encounter is testament to the brave minority who chose to uphold kindness in the face of hatred. It is testament to people like Hosenfeld, who dared to risk their lives and disregard their orders for the sake of finding beauty in the midst of horror.
The revered pianist himself went on to become the head of Polish Radio’s music department. In 1963, he retired from the role in order to devote more time to composing and touring. He became a full-time composer in 1986.
Szpilman died in Warsaw, remaining faithful to the city he loved until the bitter end, on July 6, 2000. He was 88 years old.
In October of 2007, Hosenfeld was posthumously honored by the president of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, with a Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for his humanitarian conduct.
A starving man, a piano, and a simple command from an enemy soldier demonstrated that even in the darkest depths of despair, there is beauty to be found.
