The Nazi horrors have spawned many heroic true stories. The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski, is one such tale of survival in the face of adversity. When the film begins and ends, Wladyslaw Szpilman (played by Adrien Brody) is playing the piano for a Polish radio station. Midway through the performance, bombs explode, the broadcast is canceled, German soldiers invade, and Jews run for their lives to Warsaw. But the Nazis confine Jews to the makeshift Warsaw Ghetto, which is separated from the rest of the city with a wall not much different from the later Berlin Wall. The film spares no opportunity to show the brutality of the Nazi soldiers in roughing up Jews, including members of Szpilman's family. Soon, Jews are rounded up for the death camps. Szpilman instead is selected to do work for the Nazi occupiers, and in time fellow musicians provide safe lodging in a manner similar to that of Anne Frank. In one such safe house he observes the revolt of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto as well as efforts of the underground to destroy a Nazi police station. When his conventional lodging must be abandoned, Szpilman wanders the ruins of the city in search of food. One day, Captain Wilm Hosenfeld (played by Thomas Kretschmann), the local Nazi army commander, discovers Szpilman, asks him his occupation, and then asks him to play the piano. Thereafter, Hosenfeld secretly supplies Szpilman with food, knowing that the Russians were likely to capture the Germans. Near the end of the film, Hosenfeld begs a passing Jewish musician to ask Szpilman to come to his rescue for his kindness. However, Hosenfeld died in a Soviet POW camp, and Szpilman lived to publish his memoir in 1946, play for Polish radio again, and died at the age of eighty-eight. MH

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The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945
by Wladyslaw Szpilman