The Pianist

by Wladyslaw Szpilman

  We had settled down reasonably comfortably, waiting for the train. Mother was sitting on the bundle of our things, Regina was on the ground beside her, I was standing, and Father was walking nervously up and down, his hands behind his back, four steps one way, four steps back. Only now, in the glaring sunlight, when there was no point in worrying about any useless plans to save us any more, did I have time to examine Mother closely. She looked dreadful, although she was apparently fully in control of herself. Her hair, once beautiful and always carefully tended, had hardly any colour left in it and was hanging down in strands over her careworn, wrinkled face. The light in her bright black eyes seemed to have gone out, and a nervous twitch ran down from her right temple and over her cheek to the corner of her mouth. I had never noticed it before, and it showed how distressed Mother was by the scene around us. Regina was weeping, with her hands in front of her face, the tears running through her fingers.

  At intervals vehicles drove up to the gates of the Umschlagplatz and crowds of people destined for resettlement were herded in. These new arrivals did not conceal their despair. The men were talking in raised voices, and women whose children had been taken away from them were wailing and sobbing convulsively. But soon the atmosphere of leaden apathy reigning over the compound began to affect them too. They quietened down, and only occasionally was there a brief outbreak of panic when it entered the head of a passing SS man to shoot someone who did not get out of his way quickly enough, or whose expression was not sufficiently humble.

  A young woman sat on the ground not far away from us. Her dress was torn and her hair dishevelled, as if she had been fighting someone. Now, however, she sat there quite calmly, her face like death, her eyes fixed on some point in space. Her fingers spread wide, clutching her throat, and from time to time she asked, with monotonous regularity, ‘Why did I do it? Why did I do it?’

  A young man standing beside her, obviously her husband, was trying to comfort her and convince her of something, speaking softly, but it did not seem to penetrate her mind.

  We kept meeting acquaintances among the people driven into the compound. They came over to us, greeted us, and out of sheer habit tried to make some kind of conversation, but it was not long before these conversations broke off. They moved away, preferring to try to master their anxiety alone.

  The sun rose higher and higher, blazing down, and we suffered increasing torments of hunger and thirst. We had eaten the last of our bread and soup the evening before. It was difficult to stay put in one place, and I decided to walk about; that might be an improvement.

  As more and more people arrived the place became increasingly crowded, and you had to avoid groups of people standing and lying around. They were all discussing the same subject: where we would be taken, and if we were really going to be sent to do labour, as the Jewish police tried to convince everyone.

  I saw a group of old people lying down in one part of the compound, men and women probably evacuated from an old people’s home. They were dreadfully thin, exhausted by hunger and the heat, and obviously at the very limit of their strength. Some of them were lying there with their eyes closed, and you could not tell if they were already dead or just dying. If we were going to be a labour force, then what were these old people doing here?

  Women carrying children dragged themselves from group to group, begging for a drop of water. The Germans had turned off the water supply to the Umschlagplatz on purpose. The children’s eyes were lifeless, their lids already drooping over them: their little heads nodded on thin necks, and their dry lips were open like the mouths of small fish discarded on the bank by the fishermen.

  When I came back to my family they were not alone. A friend of Mother’s was sitting beside her, and her husband, once the owner of a large shop, had joined my father and another acquaintance of theirs. The businessman was in quite good spirits. However, their other companion, a dentist who used to practise in Śliska Street not far from our flat, saw everything in very dark hues. He was nervous and bitter.

  ‘It’s a disgrace to us all!’ he almost screamed. ‘We’re letting them take us to our death like sheep to the slaughter! If we attacked the Germans, half a million of us, we could break out of the ghetto, or at least die honourably, not as a stain on the face of history!’

  Father listened. Rather embarrassed, but with a kindly smile, he shrugged his shoulders slightly and asked, ‘How can you be absolutely certain they’re sending us to our death?’

  The dentist clasped his hands. ‘Well, of course I don’t know for certain. How could I? Are they about to tell us? But you can be ninety per cent sure they plan to wipe us all out!’

  Father smiled again, as if he were even more sure of himself after this reply. ‘Look,’ he said, indicating the crowd at the Umschlagplatz. ‘We’re not heroes! We’re perfectly ordinary people, which is why we prefer to risk hoping for that ten per cent chance of living.’

  The businessman agreed with Father. His opinion too was diametrically opposite to the dentist’s: the Germans couldn’t be so stupid as to squander the huge potential labour force represented by the Jews. He thought we were going to labour camps, perhaps very strictly run labour camps, but surely they would not kill us.

  Meanwhile the businessman’s wife was telling Mother and Regina how she had left her silverware walled up in the cellar. It was beautiful, valuable silver, and she expected to find it again on her return from deportation.

  It was already afternoon when we saw a new group for resettlement being herded into the compound. We were horrified to see Halina and Henryk among them. So they were to share our fate too – and it had been such a comfort to think that at least the two of them would be safe.

  I hurried to meet Henryk, certain that his idiotically upright attitude was to blame for bringing him and Halina here. I bombarded him with questions and reproaches before he could get a word of explanation in, but he was not going to deign to answer me anyway. He shrugged his shoulders, took a small Oxford edition of Shakespeare out of his pocket, moved over to one side of us and began to read.

  It was Halina who told us what had happened. They heard at work that we had been taken away, and they simply volunteered to go to the Umschlagplatz because they wanted to be with us.

  What a stupid emotional reaction on their part! I decided to get them away from here at any price. After all, they were not on the list for resettlement. They could stay in Warsaw.

  The Jewish policeman who had brought them knew me from the Sztuka café, and I was counting on being able to soften his heart quite easily, particularly as there was no formal reason for the two of them to be here. Unfortunately I had miscalculated: he wouldn’t hear of letting them go. Like every policeman, he was duty bound to deliver five people to the Umschlagplatz every day personally, on pain of being resettled himself if he did not comply. Halina and Henryk made up today’s quota of five. He was tired and had no intention of letting them go and setting out to chase up two more people, God knew where. In his opinion these hunts were not an easy assignment, since people would not come when the police called them but hid instead, and anyway he was sick of the whole thing.

  I went back to my family empty-handed. Even this last attempt to save at least a couple of us had failed, like all my earlier attempts. I sat down beside Mother in a very downcast mood.

  It was now five in the afternoon, but as hot as ever, and the crowd grew greater with every passing hour. People got lost in the crush and called to one another in vain. We heard the shots and shouting which meant raids were going on in the nearby streets. Agitation grew as the hour approached at which the train was supposed to come.

  The woman next to us who kept asking, ‘Why did I do it?’ got on our nerves more than anyone else. We knew what she was talking about by now. Our friend the businessman had found out. When everyone was told to leave their building this woman, her husband and their child had hidden in a place prepared in advance. As the police were passing it the baby began crying, and in he
r fear the mother smothered it with her own hands. Unfortunately even that did not help. The baby’s crying and then its death rattle were heard, and the hiding place was discovered.

  At one point a boy made his way through the crowd in our direction with a box of sweets on a string round his neck. He was selling them at ridiculous prices, although heaven knows what he thought he was going to do with the money. Scraping together the last of our small change, we bought a single cream caramel. Father divided it into six parts with his penknife. That was our last meal together.

  Around six o’clock a sense of nervous tension came over the compound. Several German cars had driven up, and the police were inspecting those destined to be taken away, picking out the young and strong. These lucky ones were obviously to be used for other purposes. A crowd of many thousands began pressing that way; people were shouting, trying to drown each other out, get to the front and display their physical advantages. The Germans responded by firing. The dentist, still with our group, could scarcely contain his indignation. He snapped furiously at my father, as if it were all his fault. ‘So now do you believe me when I say they’re going to kill us all? People fit for work will stay here. Death lies that way!’

  His voice broke as he tried to shout this above the noise of the crowd and the shooting, pointing the way the transports were to go.

  Downcast and grief-stricken, Father did not reply. The businessman shrugged his shoulders and smiled ironically; he was still in good spirits. He did not think the selection of a few hundred people meant anything.

  The Germans had finally picked their labour force and now drove off, but the crowd’s agitation did not die down. Soon afterwards we heard the whistle of a locomotive in the distance and the sound of trucks rattling over the rails as they came closer. A few more minutes, and the train came into sight: more than a dozen cattle trucks and goods trucks rolling slowly towards us. The evening breeze, blowing in the same direction, wafted a suffocating wave of chlorine our way.

  At the same time the cordon of Jewish police and SS men surrounding the compound became denser and began making its way towards its centre. Once again we heard shots fired to frighten us. Loud wailing from the women and the sound of children weeping rose from the close-packed crowd.

  We got ready to leave. Why wait? The sooner we were in the trucks the better. A line of police was stationed a few paces away from the train, leaving a broad path open for the crowd. The path led to the open doors of the chlorinated trucks.

  By the time we had made our way to the train the first trucks were already full. People were standing in them pressed close to each other. SS men were still pushing with their rifle butts, although there were loud cries from inside and complaints about the lack of air. And indeed the smell of chlorine made breathing difficult, even some distance from the trucks. What went on in there if the floors had to be so heavily chlorinated? We had gone about halfway down the train when I suddenly heard someone shout, ‘Here! Here, Szpilman!’ A hand grabbed me by the collar, and I was flung back and out of the police cordon.

  Who dared do such a thing? I didn’t want to be parted from my family. I wanted to stay with them!

  My view was now of the closed ranks of the policemen’s backs. I threw myself against them, but they did not give way. Peering past the policemen’s heads I could see Mother and Regina, helped by Halina and Henryk, clambering into the trucks, while Father was looking around for me.

  ‘Papa!’ I shouted.

  He saw me and took a couple of steps my way, but then hesitated and stopped. He was pale, and his lips trembled nervously. He tried to smile, helplessly, painfully, raised his hand and waved goodbye, as if I were setting out into life and he was already greeting me from beyond the grave. Then he turned and went towards the trucks.

  I flung myself at the policemen’s shoulders again with all my might.

  ‘Papa! Henryk! Halina!’

  I shouted like someone possessed, terrified to think that now, at the last vital moment, I might not get to them and we would be parted for ever.

  One of the policemen turned and looked angrily at me.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Go on, save yourself!’

  Save myself? From what? In a flash I realized what awaited the people in the cattle trucks. My hair stood on end. I glanced behind me. I saw the open compound, the railway lines and platforms, and beyond them the streets. Driven by compulsive animal fear, I ran for the streets, slipped in among a column of Council workers just leaving the place, and got through the gate that way.

  When I could think straight again, I was on a pavement among buildings. An SS man came out of one of the houses with a Jewish policeman. The SS man had an impassive, arrogant face; the policeman was positively crawling to him, smiling, dancing attendance. He pointed to the train standing at the Umschlagplatz and said to the German, with comradely familiarity and in a sarcastic tone, ‘Well, off they go for meltdown!’

  I looked the way he was pointing. The doors of the trucks had been closed, and the train was starting off, slowly and laboriously.

  I turned away and staggered down the empty street, weeping out loud, pursued by the fading cries of the people shut up in those trucks. It sounded like the twittering of caged birds in deadly peril.

  10 ∼ A Chance of Life

  I simply walked straight ahead. I didn’t mind where I went. The Umschlagplatz and the trucks carrying my family away were behind me now. I could not hear the train any longer; it was already several kilometres beyond the city. Yet I could feel it inside me as it moved away. With every step I took along the pavement I became lonelier. I was aware of being torn irrevocably from everything that had made up my life until now. I did not know what awaited me, only that it was sure to be as bad as I could imagine. There was no way I could return to the building where our family had last been living. The SS guards would kill me on the spot, or send me back to the Umschlagplatz as someone left off the resettlement transport by mistake. I had no idea where I would spend the night, but at the moment I did not really care, although there was a lurking fear of the coming twilight in my unconscious mind.

  The street might have been swept clean: doors were locked or left wide open in the buildings from which all the inhabitants had been taken. A Jewish policeman approached me. I was not interested in him, and would have paid him no attention if he had not stopped and cried out, ‘Władek!’

  When I too stopped, he added in surprise, ‘What are you doing here at this time of day?’

  It was only now that I recognized him. He was a relation of mine, and not popular in our family. We thought his morals dubious and tried to avoid him. He could always wriggle out of difficulty somehow, and he kept falling on his feet by dint of methods other people would regard as wrong. When he joined the police it merely confirmed his bad reputation.

  As soon as I recognized him in his uniform all these thoughts went through my head, but next moment it occurred to me that he was now my closest relation, in fact my only relation. Anyway, here was someone connected with the memory of my family.

  ‘It’s like this…’ I began. I was going to tell him how my parents, my brother and my sisters had been taken away, but I could not get another word out. However, he understood. He came up to me and took my arm.

  ‘Perhaps it’s better that way,’ he whispered, and made a gesture of resignation. ‘The quicker the better, really. It’s waiting for us all.’ After a moment’s silence, he added, ‘Anyway, come round to our place. It will cheer us all up a bit.’

  I agreed, and spent my first night on my own with these relations.

  In the morning I went to see Mieczysław Lichtenbaum, the son of the new chairman of the Jewish Council, whom I had known well when I was still playing the piano in the ghetto cafés. He suggested that I could play in the German extermination commando’s casino, where the Gestapo and SS officers relaxed in the evening after a tiring day spent murdering Jews. They were served by Jews who would sooner or later
be murdered too. Of course I did not want to accept such an offer, although Lichtenbaum couldn’t understand why it did not appeal to me, and was hurt when I declined. Without further discussion, he got me enrolled in a column of workers demolishing the walls of the former large ghetto, now to be incorporated with the Aryan part of the city.

  Next day I left the Jewish quarter for the first time in two years. It was a fine, hot day, somewhere around 20 August. Just as fine as it had been for many days before, as fine as the last day I spent with my family at the Umschlagplatz. We walked in a column in rows of four abreast, under the command of Jewish foremen, guarded by two SS men. We stopped in Żelazna Brama Square. So there was still life like this somewhere!

  Street traders with baskets full of wares stood outside the market hall, now closed and presumably converted into some sort of stores by the Germans. Gleaming sunlight brought a glow to the colours of fruit and vegetables, made the scales of the fish sparkle, and struck dazzling light from the tin lids of preserve jars. Women were walking around the traders, bargaining, going from basket to basket, making their purchases and then moving off towards the city centre. The dealers in gold and currency were calling out monotonously, ‘Gold, buy gold. Dollars, roubles!’

  At some point a vehicle hooted far down a side street, and the grey-green shape of a police truck came into sight. The traders panicked, hastily packed up their wares and fell over themselves in their efforts to get away. There was shouting and hopeless confusion all over the square. So even here everything was not really all right!