Survivor Literature | The Pianist

Incredible story! | The Pianist | Wladyslaw Szpilman

books:


	• The Pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman Picador, 1999 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 102 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Gripping account, timeless

I could not put down this book, and read it in two sittings. Wladyslaw Szpilman, the famed pianist and composer, describes his harrowing account of life under Nazi terror. As a Polish Jew, Szpilman was considered by the Nazis to be entirely subhuman, and it is a miracle he survived the persistent and random acts of violence that surrounded him. He was nearly sent to a death camp along with his five family members, and somehow was pulled off the Birkenau-bound train to a grim prospect of survival. The images in this book are harrowing, such as the depiction of the shattered skulls of little girls, victims of the Nazis' "preferred" method of killing children by picking them up by their legs and swinging them into a brick wall. Imagine the horror....Szpilman's account is so matter-of-fact at times that you wonder how he survived. The fact that he did is a testament of human endurance, but also the ways of fate. There were occasions when he survived simply by the luck of the draw in a Godless universe.

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Survivor Literature

Szpilman reveals the tragedy of Jewish life in Warsaw under the German occupation from 1939-1946. Szpilman's autobiographical work was first published in postwar Poland in 1946 but then quickly removed from circulation by Polish authorities. An accomplished pianist before the war, Szpilman played for Polish Radio during the siege of Warsaw and later within the Jewish ghetto to provide food for his parents and siblings. With the systematic liquidation of Jewish life in Warsaw and separation from his family, Szpilman's life took a series of surprising twists. As the reader views life in the ghetto through the eyes of a survivor, his escape from the ghetto before the Jewish up-rising and his ultimate survival consistently depended upon a timely combination of luck and sympathetic acquaintances B including a German army officer.

Included with Szpilman's memoirs are excerpts from Captain Wilm Hosenfeld's diaries and Wolf Biermann's own brief commentary. Hosenfeld's equating of National Socialism with Stalinist Communist and Biermann's emphasis on Szpilman's willingness to break with his past detracts from the overall quality of this work. Nevertheless, this work is well written and will retain the reader's attention to the end.

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Incredible story!

This book is an incredible story of survival. I have seen the movie also. I would recommend both!

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Incredible journey!

One of those amazing stories that makes you realize just how much the human spirit can take, and still survive. And just how inhumane we humans can be towards each other. Once you start reading, you won't be able to put this down.

FINALLY: TRUTH & OBJECTIVITY ON THE HOLOCAUST FOR POLES AND JEWS. GOOD POLES,JEWS,GERMANS,AS WELL AS, BAD - PERIOD!!!

Polish filmaker Roman Polanski who was born and raised in Poland by Catholic parents, was there to see what it was really like, unlike many others who were never there, but make ignorent anti-Polish judgements. It's funny how those who were actually there, like Wladislaw, tell a completely different story that the Hollywood/Media tells. Wladyslaw told the truth. Read the book, and see the movie. Get this book and movie to your schools and libraries - Please. This story has healing qualities that brings people together, and not apart.

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Named one of the Best Books of 1999 by the Los Angeles Times, The Pianist is now a major motion picture directed by Roman Polanski and starring Adrien Brody (Son of Sam). The Pianist won the Cannes Film Festival?s most prestigious prize?the Palme d?Or.

On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin?s Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside?so loudly that he couldn?t hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air.

Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, The Pianist is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling.

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