Władysław Szpilman (1911–2000). “The” pianist

The murder of Szpilman’s family
 

On 16 August 1942, it was the Szpilman family’s turn. The Germans classified only Henryk and Halina, Władysław’s two youngest siblings, as being fit for work. He himself, his parents and his sister Regina were to appear at the collection point. However, Henryk and Halina were desperate to remain with their family and chose to join the others. Shortly before the wagons were loaded, Władysław was recognised by a member of the Jewish police guards and pulled out of the crowd. Bewildered, Szpilman tried to return to his family, but was unable to break through the police cordon. Between the heads of the German soldiers, he saw his relatives for the last time. 

By the end of September 1942, the Nazis had deported more than 300,000 Jews to Treblinka – three-quarters of the population of the ghetto. Nearly all of them were murdered in the gas chambers immediately on arrival. Those who remained in the ghetto had to constantly prove that they were able to work. At first, Szpilman was given a job by people he knew, which consisted of tearing down the walls in the section of the ghetto that the Germans wanted to incorporate into the “Aryan” part of the city after its inhabitants had been cleared out. As a result of this work, Szpilman was able to move more freely for the first time in two years. After this task had been completed, he was deployed elsewhere as a manual labourer, on assignments such as the construction of a palace for the SS “Hauptsturmführer” (SS mid-level commander – translator’s note) on Aleja Ujazdowskie, or unloading coal deliveries and making apartments ready for SS officers. During this time, rumours of an uprising in the ghetto began to spread. Weapons were secretly being stockpiled from the “Aryan” part of the city. Szpilman decided to try and escape from the ghetto. His friend, the actor Andrzej Bogucki, and his wife helped him by hiding him in a small artist’s studio at 10 Noakowski Street. However, it was extremely risky for Jews to remain in any one place for a longer period of time, since they all to easily awakened the interest of spies who were eager to make a profit, known as “Szmalcowniki”. Szpilman was forced to change his hiding place every few days. It was in one of his hideouts he found out about the outbreak of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. It began on 19 April 1943, on the day before the Jewish holiday of Pesach, after Heinrich Himmler had ordered the final liquidation of the ghetto. By this point in time, only between 50,000 and 70,000 people remained of the nearly half a million Jews who were originally brought to the ghetto.[13] However, the Germans had such a great advantage over the utterly exhausted inhabitants in terms of both numbers and weapons that the uprising was quickly quelled and brought to an end on 16 May 1943. On that day, the ghetto was closed and the entire district was razed to the ground. 

A life in hiding
 

At this time, Szpilman was hiding in the abandoned bachelor apartment of the conductor Czesław Lewicki at 83 Puławska Street. He was neither able to leave his hideout, nor did he have anything left to eat. Every so often, someone from the underground organisation came by to give the musician meagre food rations, but after a certain point, these visits stopped. On 12 August 1943, Szpilman was discovered by neighbours who wanted to report him to the Germans. However, he was able to flee in time, and was taken in for a short time by a friend. He then began to search in panic for a new place to hide: “All my attempts at finding a new hiding place, meanwhile, were dead-ends. I came up against refusals on all sides. People were afraid to take in a Jew; after all, the death penalty was mandatory for the offence.”[14] Eventually, Szpilman, again with the help of people he knew, moved into a rented building in Aleja Niepodległości. There, on 1 August 1944, he suddenly found himself caught up in the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. Several days later, the building in which he was hiding was surrounded by the Germans and set on fire. Szpilman was able to save himself by remaining on one of the upper floors, which were not reached by the fire. All the other residents in the building had taken refuge in the cellar. The uprising was crushed on 2 October. According to different estimates, the number of people killed varied between 150,000 and 200,000. During the weeks that followed, Szpilman wandered around the empty district and from his hiding place witnessed the deportation of the remaining civilian population out of the city. Warsaw was left behind, an abandoned city, and the remaining buildings were systematically blown up by the Germans.