Yet sadly, one thing I have noticed lately is the profound sense of indifference towards the issue. The younger generation seems not to care as much as it should about the obvious and less obvious victims of the last world war and what sometimes frightens me even more is the growing tendency in younger people to turn to fascist and ultra-right wing nationalist movements in times of economic crisis.
So my post today is mostly dedicated to younger people, those who vaunt their national identity in the face of the rest of the world, and who lack respect for other cultures, other languages and other races.
Alas I didn’t get to know Wladislaw Szpilman as a talented pianist and a composer, but rather as the narrator of a dramatic story in Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist”. Then, back in 2002, not only did the film astound the jury at the Cannes festival, it stirred the whole world. Only afterwards did I learn that beneath the striking images of Warsaw occupied by the Nazi invaders, was hidden the true story of a man who not only survived the war with human dignity intact, but also narrated all the events between 1939 and 1945 in his diary which was published the year after the end of the war and entitled “The Pianist. The Warsaw diaries 1939-1945”. First published in 1946 the book was rapidly banned. The name of Spzilman became famous again in 1998 when the book was published again in Germany (!) and this time was translated in 8 languages.
Before the war Wladislaw Szpilman had been a talented pianist working with Polish radio in Warsaw and was massively successful and famed for his Chopin performances. In Poland he was also known as a composer who wrote symphonies, composed scores for a number of films as well as many chansons and songs, which, according to his son Andrzej Szpilman, were very popular at that time, many of them going on to become great national hits.
The beginning of the war found Wladislaw Szpilman in Warsaw, where he remained throughout, and where most of the events described in his book take place. Szpilman narrates his memories chronologically, starting from September 1939 but there is no precision and there are no exact dates. It seems as though he picks out the most important, life-changing moments which define the shape of the whole book. Specific memories invade his mind in vivid imagery (similar to a scene in a film) and become separate chapters.
For his chapters he chooses strong, almost disturbing, names, such as, “The Hour of the Children and the Mad”, “A Chance for Survival”, “In a Burning House” and the most heartfelt “Nocturne in C-sharp minor”.
From the very first lines of “The Warsaw Diaries” Szpilman offers us a very disturbing and uncomfortable description of his own personal impressions of occupied life against the wider background of the empowered Nazis and the repressed Jews. We soon understand the delicate character of the man behind those lines. From the manner of his writing (it can feel as though the author is not personally involved, such is the educated and attentive style of writing even about his most obvious enemies) we soon understand the extreme delicacy and sensitivity of his soul. Szpilman is completely detached and surprisingly reserved; it seems that he could see the whole objective picture only by suppressing his very subjective impressions. The way he tries to repress his own resentments, showing himself as a man of strong will and a great noble heart is absolutely unique and this alone would be reason enough to read his book.
Szpilman’s diaries expose the naked truth about life in occupied Warsaw, the unbearable life in the ghetto, the hunger, the illnesses and death. He lays out the most personal details about the loss of his family and does so with dignity and respect. It seems that Spzilman survived all possible dramas: he perseveres amid numerous illnesses, hunger, the death of his entire family in Treblinka and complete isolation. It is almost unbelievable how one man could escape the clutches of death in its many guises, so many times.
Throughout the book we are in awe at his incredible luck and fear it might end tragically at any moment. But no - Szpilman withstands it all. He goes through hell and back and survives to tell us how easy it is to destroy a life and, perhaps more surprisingly, how easy it can be to save it.
The last chapter of the book entitled “Nocturne in C-Sharp minor” shows us a true hero of the story, the German officer Wilm Hosenfeld. Hosenfeld will go down in history as an anti-Nazi German, one who saved countless Jews from death, and Wladislaw Szpilman was lucky to be one of them. In January 1945 Hosenfeld was taken prisoner by the Soviets and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Szpilman petitioned the Soviets for Hosenfeld’s release. The Soviets refused to consider the petitions and in 1952 Hosenfeld died after a series of strokes in a Soviet prison near Stalingrad.
In his own personal diary Wilm Hosenfeld wrote: “For all this, for all the murders we committed, for all the misery we brought, we, our whole nation will pay… We will be forever cursed. We do not deserve pardon. We are all responsible for this”.
For a long time Wladislaw Szpilman refused to talk about the war, he refused to remember. The book of memories published in 1946 was an absolution and a deeply personal revelation about the darkest moment in the history of humanity, a revelation of the war which, like the blood red colour has left an indelible stain on the canvas of history and humanity.
