Directly after the war it was impossible to publish a book in Poland which presented a German officer as a brave and helpful man. It may interest readers to know that for the Polish edition Władysław Szpilman found himself obliged to pretend that his rescuer Wilm Hosenfeld was an Austrian. An Austrian angel was obviously ‘not quite so bad’ at the time, absurd as it seems today. In the years of the Cold War Austria and East Germany were linked by a common piece of hypocrisy: both pretended to have been forcibly occupied by Hitler’s Germany in the Second World War.
* * *
In Yad Vashem there is an Avenue of the Just where young trees have been planted, one for every Gentile who saved Jews from the Holocaust. Small plates on the young trees growing in the stony soil bear the names of these brave people. Anyone going to the great museum passes thousands of such names. I hope to ensure that there is soon a tree growing for Captain Wilm Hosenfeld in the Avenue of the Just, watered by the river Jordan. As for who will plant it – who but Władysław Szpilman, with the support of his son Andrzej?
In the studio of Polish Radio
Praise for The Pianist
“Staggering … Even by the standards set by Holocaust memoirs, this book is a stunner.”
—Seattle Weekly
“[Szpilman’s] story of courage, fortitude, blind luck, and survival in the Jewish ghetto is extraordinary.”
—Columbus Dispatch
“[The Pianist] joins the ranks of Holocaust memoirs notable as much for their literary value as for their historical significance.… Szpilman is a remarkably lucid observer and chronicler.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A striking Holocaust memoir that conveys with exceptional immediacy and cool reportage the author’s desperate fight for survival. This is also a book about the power of music, which provides Szpilman the determination to go on and literally saves him several times.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A richly detailed and absorbing work … fascinating for its detail … illuminating and astonishing.”
—Rain Taxi
THE PIANIST. Copyright © 1999 by Wladyslaw Szpilman. Translation by Anthea Bell © Victor Gollancz Ltd 1999. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Szpilman, Wladyslaw.
[Smierc miasta. English]
The pianist: the extraordinary story of one man’s survival in Warsaw, 1939–45 / Wladyslaw Szpilman ; with extracts from the diary of Wilm Hosenfeld ; foreword by Andrzej Szpilman ; epilogue by Wolf Biermann ; translated by Anthea Bell.
p cm.
ISBN 0-312-24415-0 (hc)
ISBN 0-312-26376-7 (pbk)
1. Szpilman, Wladyslaw. 2. Jews—Poland—Warsaw Biography. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Poland—Warsaw Personal narratives. 4. Jewish musicians—Poland—Warsaw Biography. 5. Warsaw (Poland) Biography. I. Hosenfeld, Wilm. II. Title.
DS135.P63S94713 1999
940.53'18'092—dc21
[B]
99-36033
CIP
First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
eISBN 9781466837621
First eBook edition: January 2013
The Pianist Page 19