Wladyslaw Szpilman

Władysław Szpilman (5 December 1911 – 6 July 2000) was a Polish-Jewish pianist, classical composer and Holocaust survivor.

In 1931, he was a student of the prestigious Academy of Arts in Berlin, Germany, where he studied with Artur Schnabel, Franz Schreker, and Leonid Kreutzer.

After Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Szpilman returned to Warsaw, where he quickly became a celebrated pianist and composer of both classical and popular music.

Primarily a soloist, he was also the chamber music partner of such acclaimed violinists as Roman Totenberg, Ida Haendel and Henryk Szeryng, and in 1934, he toured Poland with U.S. violinist, Bronislav Gimpel.

On 5 April 1935, Szpilman joined the Polish Radio, where he worked as a pianist performing classical and jazz music.

His compositions at this time included orchestral works, piano pieces, and also music for films, as well as roughly 50 songs, many of which became quite popular in Poland.

Szpilman started playing for Polish Radio in 1935 as their house pianist.

At the time of the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, he was a celebrity and a featured soloist at the Polskie Radio, which was bombed on 23 September 1939, shortly after broadcasting the last Chopin recital played by Szpilman.

The Nazi occupiers established the General Government, and created ghettos in many Polish cities, including Warsaw.

Szpilman and his family did not yet need to find a new residence, as their apartment was already in the ghetto area.

In 1939, on 23 September, Szpilman was in the middle of broadcasting when Germans opened fire on the studio and he was forced to stop playing.

This was the last live music broadcast that was heard until the war's end.

Władysław Szpilman and his family, along with all other Jews living in Warsaw, were forced to move into a "Jewish quarter" – the Warsaw Ghetto – on 31 October 1940.

Once all the Jews were confined within the ghetto, a wall was constructed to separate them from the rest of the Nazi German-occupied city.

Szpilman managed to find work as a musician to support his family, which included his mother, father, brother Henryk, and two sisters, Regina and Halina.

He first worked at the Nowoczesna Cafe, where the patrons sometimes ignored his playing in order to conduct business, as he recalled in the memoir.

Szpilman later played in a cafe on Sienna Street and after 1942 in the Sztuka Cafe on Leszno Street as well.

In these last two cafes he performed chamber music with violinist Zygmunt Lederman, performed in the piano duo with Andrzej Goldfeder, and played with other musicians as well.

Everyone in his family was deported in 1942 to Treblinka, an extermination camp within German-occupied Poland roughly 80.5 km northeast of Warsaw.

A member of the Jewish Police assisting in deportations, who recognized Szpilman, pulled him from a line of people—including his parents, brother, and two sisters—being loaded onto a train at the transport site (which, as in other ghettos, was called the Umschlagplatz).

None of Szpilman's family members survived the war.

Szpilman stayed in the ghetto as a labourer, and helped smuggle in weapons for the coming Jewish resistance uprising.

Szpilman remained in the Warsaw Ghetto until 13 February 1943, shortly before it was abolished after the deportation of most of its inhabitants in April–May 1943.

Szpilman found places to hide in Warsaw and survived with the help of his friends from Polish Radio and fellow musicians such as Andrzej Bogucki and his wife Janina, Czesław Lewicki, and Helena Lewicka supported by Edmund Rudnicki, Witold Lutosławski, Eugenia Umińska, Piotr Perkowski, and Irena Sendler.

About thirty non-Jewish Poles were involved in helping Szpilman during the war.

He evaded capture several times.

Beginning in August 1944, Szpilman was hiding out in an abandoned building at Aleja Niepodległości Street 223.

In November, he was discovered there by a German officer, Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, who instructed him to play the piano in the building.

To Szpilman's surprise, Hosenfeld also helped him, bringing him food and supplies on several occasions until the Germans retreated from Warsaw.

When Szpilman resumed his job at Polish Radio in 1945, he did so by carrying on where he left off six years before: poignantly, he opened the first transmission by once again playing Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp Minor (Lento con gran espressione).

Szpilman is widely known as the central figure in the 2002 Roman Polanski film The Pianist, which was based on his autobiographical account of how he survived the German occupation of Warsaw.

He is portrayed by American actor Adrien Brody.

Szpilman studied piano at music academies in Berlin and Warsaw.

He became a popular performer on Polish radio and in concert.

Confined within the Warsaw Ghetto after the German invasion of Poland, Szpilman spent two years in hiding.

Following the Warsaw Uprising and the subsequent destruction of the city, he was helped by Wilm Hosenfeld, a German officer who detested Nazi policies.

After World War II, Szpilman resumed his career on Polish radio.

Szpilman was also a prolific composer; his output included hundreds of songs and many orchestral pieces.

Szpilman was also recognized as the most famous of the "Warsaw Robinsons", a term to refer to Poles who survived in the ruins of Warsaw after the Warsaw Uprising.

Szpilman began his study of the piano at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, Poland, where he studied piano with Aleksander Michałowski and Józef Śmidowicz, first- and second-generation pupils of Franz Liszt.