Władysław Szpilman

He became a popular performer on Polish Radio and in concert. Confined within the Warsaw Ghetto after the German invasion of Poland, Szpilman spent two years in hiding. Following the Warsaw Uprising and the subsequent destruction of the city, he was helped by Wilm Hosenfeld, a German officer who detested Nazi policies. After World War II, Szpilman resumed his career on Polish Radio. Szpilman was also a prolific composer; his output included hundreds of songs and many orchestral pieces. Szpilman was also recognized as the most famous of the "Robinson Crusoes", a term referring to Poles who survived in the ruins of Warsaw after the Warsaw Uprising.

Władysław Szpilman studied at Chopin University of Music and Academy of Arts, Berlin. The recorded working language is Polish. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are classical music. Works named in the authority record are Śmierć Miasta and The Pianist. Distinctions recorded are Commander with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta, Gold Cross of Merit, Knight of the Order of Polonia Restituta and Zasłużony Działacz Kultury.

• Name — Władysław Szpilman • Born — 5 December 1911 • Birthplace — Sosnowiec, Congress Poland, Russian Empire • Died — 6 July 2000 • Place of death — Warsaw, Poland • Resting Place — Powązki Military Cemetery, Warsaw • Citizenship — Polish • Occupation — Composer, pianist, author • Years Active — 1930–2000 • Children — 2 (incl. Andrzej)

Szpilman began his study of the piano at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, Poland, where he studied piano with Aleksander Michałowski and Józef Śmidowicz, first- and second-generation pupils of Franz Liszt. In 1931, he was a student of the prestigious Academy of Arts in Berlin, Germany, where he studied with Artur Schnabel, Franz Schreker, and Leonid Kreutzer. After Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Szpilman returned to Warsaw, where he quickly became a celebrated pianist and composer of both classical and popular music. Primarily a soloist, he was also the chamber music partner of such acclaimed violinists as Roman Totenberg, Ida Haendel and Henryk Szeryng, and in 1934, he toured Poland with U.S. violinist, Bronislav Gimpel. On 5 April 1935, Szpilman joined the Polish Radio, where he worked as a pianist performing classical and jazz music. His compositions at this time included orchestral works, piano pieces, and also music for films, as well as roughly 50 songs, many of which became quite popular in Poland. At the time of the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, he was a celebrity and a featured soloist at the Polskie Radio, which was bombed on 23 September 1939, shortly after broadcasting the last Chopin recital played by Szpilman. The Nazi occupiers established the General Government, and created ghettos in many Polish cities, including Warsaw. Szpilman and his family did not yet need to find a new residence, as their apartment was already in the ghetto area.

• Illustration — Plaque on a house in Warsaw where Szpilman was hiding in 1943 in the studio of his friend, composer Czesław Lewicki • Illustration — House at 223 Niepodległości Alley in Warsaw where in 1944 Szpilman met Wilm Hosenfeld • Illustration — Commemorative plaque on the building • Illustration — Photo of Szpilman, the most famous of Warsaw Robinsons, at the Warsaw Uprising Museum Władysław Szpilman and his family, along with all other Jews living in Warsaw, were forced to move into a "Jewish quarter" – the Warsaw Ghetto – on 31 October 1940. Once all the Jews were confined within the ghetto, a wall was constructed to separate them from the rest of the Nazi German-occupied city. Szpilman managed to find work as a musician to support his family, which included his mother, father, brother Henryk, and two sisters, Regina and Halina. He first worked at the Nowoczesna Cafe, where the patrons sometimes ignored his playing in order to conduct business, as he recalled in the memoir. Szpilman later played in a cafe on Sienna Street and after 1942 in the Sztuka Cafe on Leszno Street as well. In these last two cafes he performed chamber music with violinist Zygmunt Lederman, performed in the piano duo with Andrzej Goldfeder, and played with other musicians as well. Everyone in his family was deported in 1942 to Treblinka, an extermination camp within German-occupied Poland approximately 80 km northeast of Warsaw. A member of the Jewish Police assisting in deportations, who recognized Szpilman, pulled him from a line of people—including his parents, brother, and two sisters—being loaded onto a train at the transport site (which, as in other ghettos, was called the Umschlagplatz). None of Szpilman's family members survived the war. Szpilman stayed in the ghetto as a labourer, and helped smuggle in weapons for the coming Jewish resistance uprising. Szpilman remained in the Warsaw Ghetto until 13 February 1943, shortly before it was abolished after the deportation of most of its inhabitants in April–May 1943. Szpilman found places to hide in Warsaw and survived with the help of his friends from Polish Radio and fellow musicians such as Andrzej Bogucki and his wife Janina, Czesław Lewicki, and Helena Lewicka supported by Edmund Rudnicki, Witold Lutosławski, Eugenia Umińska, Piotr Perkowski, and Irena Sendler. About thirty non-Jewish Poles were involved in helping Szpilman during the war. He evaded capture several times. Beginning in August 1944, Szpilman was hiding out in an abandoned building at Aleja Niepodległości Street 223. In November, he was discovered there by a German officer, Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, who asked him to play the piano in the building to corroborate his music claims. To Szpilman's surprise, Hosenfeld helped him, bringing him food and supplies on several occasions until the Germans retreated from Warsaw.

Szpilman started playing for Polish Radio in 1935 as their house pianist. In 1939, on 23 September, Szpilman was in the middle of broadcasting when Germans opened fire on the studio and he was forced to stop playing. This was the last live music broadcast that was heard until the war's end. When Szpilman resumed his job at Polish Radio in 1945, he did so by carrying on where he left off six years before: poignantly, he opened the first transmission by once again playing Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp Minor (Lento con gran espressione). • Illustration — Władysław Szpilman's grave in Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw From 1945 to 1963, Szpilman was director of the Popular Music Department at Polish Radio. Szpilman performed at the same time as a concert pianist and chamber musician in Poland, as well as throughout Europe, Asia, and America. During this period, he composed several symphonic works and about 500 other compositions that are still popular in Poland today. He also wrote music for radio plays and films and in 1961, he created the International Song Contest in Sopot, Poland, which has been produced every summer for more than 50 years. Szpilman and Bronislav Gimpel founded the Warsaw Piano Quintet in 1963 with which Szpilman performed more than 2000 concerts worldwide until 1986 in such places as Royal Festival Hall in London; Salle Pleyel and Salle Gaveau in Paris; Herkules Saal in Munich; as well as the Salzburger Festspiele, Brahmstage Baden-Baden, Musikhalle Hamburg a.o.

The Death of a City (original "Śmierć miasta") was written by Wladyslaw Szpilman and elaborated by Jerzy Waldorff shortly after the war ended, and first printed in 1946 by the publishing house Wiedza. The book was censored by Stalinist authorities for political reasons. For example, the nationality of benevolent German officer Wilm Hosenfeld was changed to Austrian. As the East German dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann observed in his epilogue for the 1999 English-language edition: "Directly after the war it was impossible to publish a book in Poland which presented a German officer as a brave and helpful man," and an Austrian hero would be "not quite so bad." Biermann added caustically, "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 1998, Szpilman's son Andrzej published a new extended edition of his father's memoir, first in German translation by Karin Wolff as Das wunderbare Überleben (The Miraculous Survival) by a German publishing house Ullstein Verlag; and then in English translation by Anthea Bell as The Pianist with Epilogue by Wolf Biermann. In March 1999 Władysław Szpilman visited London for Jewish Book Week, where he met English readers to mark the publication of the book in Great Britain. It was later published in more than 35 languages, named Best book of the year by Los Angeles Times, Sunday Times, Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Economist, Library Journal, and won the Annual Jewish-Quarterly Wingate Prize 2000, and Best book of the year 2001 by magazines Lire and Elle (Paris) in 2002. The New Polish edition, Pianista: warszawskie wspomnienia 1939–1945 (Kraków: Znak, 2000) became a number 1 on the bestseller list of the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita for 3 years in 2001–2003. As it reached a much larger audience, Szpilman's memoir was widely praised. Britain's Independent described it as "a compelling, harrowing masterpiece"; it is "one of the most powerful accounts ever written" of the era declared another leading British daily. The book's description of the famed Warsaw teacher and writer Janusz Korczak has been described as "overwhelmingly powerful and poignant." Korczak declined to save himself from deportation to Treblinka; instead, he walked with the children of his orphanage to the deportation site and ultimately escorted them "into the next world," as Szpilman related: The 1999 English-language edition also includes excerpts from Wilm Hosenfeld's diary (1942–44). Biermann's Epilogue gives further insight into Hosenfeld's deeds and his character. He aided several other would-be victims in Warsaw; Hosenfeld nonetheless died (in 1952) after seven years in Soviet captivity, despite the efforts of Szpilman to help him. Although it concludes with his survival, Szpilman declined to conclude his memoir on a happy note. In the final paragraphs, he walks the streets of an abandoned and devastated Warsaw: "A stormy wind rattled the scrap-iron in the ruins, whistling and howling through the charred cavities of the windows. Twilight came on. Snow fell from the darkening, leaden sky." As one reviewer noted, "these final sentences distill the style of this astonishing and unforgettable book. Concise yet highly evocative; measured and somewhat detached, yet possessing a poeticism and a consistent spiritual tenor and strength."

Władysław Szpilman is recorded as having received Commander with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta, Gold Cross of Merit and Knight of the Order of Polonia Restituta. Recognition and collections. Szpilman received Commander with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta, Gold Cross of Merit, Knight of the Order of Polonia Restituta and Zasłużony Działacz Kultury.