Year: 2000 (1946)
Publisher: Wydawnictwo Znak
Language: Polish
The Second
World War is probably the lowest point of our species so far. Mankind, undressed
to all its bare-naked evil, rage, bigotry, hypocrisy, savagery, and moral
bankruptcy, deliberately imprinted an indelible bloodstain on its history. It
is estimated that up to 60 million people perished. They died from genocide,
massacres, bombings, and disease. Some were killed in battle. Some committed
suicide. Some starved to death. Many more still went through unspeakable
hardship, pain, despair, horror, and trauma.
Truth be
told, I try to avoid reading books about the Second World War. It marks such a revolting
epoch that it makes my stomach turn at the mere thought. And yet, some books
just have to be read, contemplated, and shared. Some experiences may never be
forgotten and by reading them, I imagine that I add my own conscience to the
collective memory of the people and events of the 1930s and 1940s. One such
book is “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank (see my review from June
2020). Another is “Pianista” (“The Pianist”) by Wladyslaw Szpilman.
The book ventures
to capture the haunting memories of a Varsovian Polish-Jewish pianist and
employee of the National Polish Radio, from the day the Second World War broke
out to the day the Nazis surrendered and Warsaw was liberated.
Szpilman
recounts how despite German bombs barraging the once prosperous Polish capital,
shattering windows and setting entire neighbourhoods aflame, tossing carts,
vehicles, horses, and people into the air leaving only charred shadows in their
stead, he made his way to the studio of the radio station to make his final
broadcast. In the midst of this inferno, where the noise of the crumbling city
and the blasts from the enemy’s relentless bombardment much of the time overcame
the sound of his grand piano, he gave an incandescent Chopin recital to his
horrified listeners as a musical valediction to the country that was to be no
more. The Polish radio was soon thereafter taken off the air and replaced by
Nazi-controlled transmissions.
He
reminisces how one day, the dwindling population of Warsaw, already decimated
by being systematically bit by bit
transported out of the city and to the extermination camps, is shocked to learn
that a sizeable portion of the centre was to be designated Jewish and
surrounded by walls on each side making it impossible to get either in or out
without authorisation. Jews living in other quarters needed to move inside the
walls, and non-Jewish Poles having thitherto resided within the designated area
needed to move out. Neighbourhoods, friendships, households, businesses,
schools were broken up in an instant and the ghetto came into existence.
In fact
there were two ghettos, connected only by a narrow passageway across Chlodna
Street which was, and I seem to recall still is, a busy thoroughfare in Warsaw
with some critical tramlines running along it. It was guarded by German soldiers
who had to stop the heavy traffic in order to allow the residents to cross from
one of the ghettos to the other. In one memorable sequence, Szpilman relates
how the soldiers, having grown bored with their monotonous jobs of keeping the
Jews at bay during rush hours, came up with a game where they commanded a group
of street musicians to play some merry tunes and then forced some unfortunate
individuals from the anticipating masses on the pavement on each side of
Chlodna Street to dance for their amusement. They found particular pleasure in
matching up conspicuously silly pairs such as the shortest man they could find
with the tallest woman or elderly and crippled couples which they spurred to
dance faster and faster under the threat of being shot on the spot, until their
frail bodies succumbed to the fatigue and tumbled to the ground.
The book is
packed with stories like these. Every single page saturated with disbelief, fear,
humiliation, despair, sacrifice, and senseless killing and death. Wladyslaw Szpilman
would lose everything and everyone to the war; except his life. As if by a
miracle, almost six years after he had given the last live recital on the
wireless in 1939, he gave the first to a once again free Poland in 1945,
playing the same piece by Frédéric Chopin as if to declare the indomitability
of the Polish resolve through the music of one of the nation’s most illustrious
patriots.
Szpilman
was to recover quickly after the war and his loyalty to Polish music and the Polish
National Radio would become his path back to some sort of normality. Rebuilding
the fine arts would prove to be a slow process facing many obstacles. While the
Germans had prohibited much Polish music during the occupation years, Chopin
among them, after the war the Russian overlords continued to restrict the
freedom of Warsaw’s musicians, artists, writers, poets, and film-makers. Not
until after Joseph Stalin’s death, did the Communist grip loosen enough to
permit western influence and a more liberal production of art and
entertainment.
In 1962,
Szpilman, who was already an established and respected pianist, composer and
songwriter at the time, became one of the founding members of what was to be
the global phenomenon “The Warsaw Quintet” and from that moment his fame was
secured.*
All this
without anybody even having heard about “Pianista”.
The fact is
that as early as 1946, the first edition of this book was released under the
name “Smierc miasta” (“Death of a City”). The actual author was the Polish
nobleman, socialite, intellectual, and cultural celebrity Jerzy Waldorff, to
whom Szpilman had entrusted the literary composition of his memoir. The book
was quickly censored by the totalitarian pro-Stalinist regime and soon put out
of print. Not until 1998, when Szpilman was 87 years old, would it see the day
of light in an uncensored German translation. It instantly became a global
success and within two years had been issued in several languages, including the
original Polish now under the title “Pianista”. Roman Polanski’s film
adaptation another two years later went on to win three Academy Awards.
During the
course of this revival, Jerzy Waldorff’s name was somehow lost. Still, the
language of the Polish original could only have been produced by a lettered and
sophisticated writer, far from Szpilman’s direct and sometimes crude way of
communicating. The contrast between the literary and high flying language on
the one hand and the horrendous events that it describes on the other, time and
time again punched me right in the gut and I found that I could only read one
chapter at the time on account of my heart-rate and blood pressure. Graphic
descriptions of one unthinkable atrocity after the other are, after all,
emotionally rather taxing.
What then
can be said about actually living through this experience?
*A
comprehensive detail on the exploits of the Warsaw Quintet based on interviews with surviving members as well as historical records and documents is brilliantly provided
in the Master thesis “Kwintet Warszawski – historia i opis dzialalnosci” by
Karolina Orzelska from 2010.
