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Summary: Terribly moving
Review: A great holocaust memoir, this book will move you to tears. Both the horror and humanity are almost too much to bear. Read this book.
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Summary: Awesome book!
Review: I picked this book out of the non-fiction list for going into for AP European History. I don't usually read historical fiction or non-fiction so I went into the book prepared to be bored out of my mind, despite what the book reviewers raved about it. Now I can easily say that this book is anything but boring. The graphic details that Wladyslaw Szpilman witnessed would be enough to glue your eyes to the book but the way he writes and desribes his surroundings is amazing to read. It was a relatively easy read too, however I would not recommend it to young readers.
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Summary: A book that should be feautured in the top 10 books to read!
Review: This book is one of the best true stories of a Jewish Man's struggle to live in Warsaw during the II World war. It was really was an eye-opener and gave me a real insight into what life was like in the ghetto during this period that no historian could.
The story was depressing and horrifing throughout, with tradgic events occuring all around him. But in the end to come out of all that and still be alive is amazing in itself. Also to write this story just after the event even better!!! This is as all the things that took place during that time would be fresh in the mind and so to would all the feeling assoicated with them.
The thing that really struck me was that thought the book there was no mean / horrible word said about the Germans. No hatred towartds them, even though they were the root of the pain he suffered in the book.
I would recommend this book as a must for this summer!!!
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Summary: GREAT BOOK! (Reviewed by a 13 year old)
Review: This book was absolutely spellbinding. It told of the horror and hate during WWII. What I found extremely surprising was that the author of this autobiography did not seem to hate the Germans for what they did. Anyone who is interested in WWII should deffinetly pick this up at the bookstore. I recommend this for ages 13+ because it contains adult concepts. A MUST READ FOR ALL!
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Summary: ~Haunting~
Review: Having seen the movie I then felt compelled to read the book wanting to hear the first hand account and words of the Pianist himself. This book written soon after WWII, brings the fresh suffering and horror of what it was like in the Polish Jewish ghettos. Though a vast, incomprehensible tradegy ,the strength of the human spirit does prevail in our writer. He lost everything and yet his will to live drove him to hang on in the face of an impossible existence. It also gives you a look at the german officer who spared his life towards the end of the war. In all the horror there were spots of light, people who were good in a drowning pool of evil. I could not put this book down and it is one of the very best books I have read in a long time. You owe it to yourself as part of the human race to read it.
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Summary: Heartwrenching
Review: Yes ,the movie was shocking and extremely well done. The book however allows the reader to hear Szpilman's voice and it is a voice well worth listening to. His simple descriptions of scenes of unspeakable horror and brutality are absolutely haunting. The film was an excellent adaptation of this book but there is no substitute for reading this man's experiences in his own words.
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Summary: Pan Wladek
Review: In January 2000, while visiting Warsaw, I met "Pan Wladek," the retired Director of Music at the Polish Radio. I read a book by him about his survival in the Nazi-occupied capital, and I was intrigued by the fact that I knew all the places he mentioned in the book. I was not surprised to learn that he still lives in the same part of Warsaw that I am from. I knew exactly where to find him.Pan Wladek was a composer, honored by President of Poland with a Commander Order with a Star of Polonia Restituta. Although for decades he was known to millions for producing popular rather than classical music. He was responsible for launching the careers of many Polish singers. They often complained at first for choosing them the wrong material, almost every time he proved them wrong. A composer of nearly 500 songs; many made the pop charts. My favorite was the one about going to the Old Town, how he described the beauty of the restored part of the city, which was almost completely destroyed during WWII as Hitler's revenge against the Home Army's Warsaw Uprising in 1944. As a child, I learned that song from my grandmother and I sang it to my daughter years later. By the age of 2, she knew it by heart. That January, I visited the author. After three attempts (finally, I realized that I was knocking on the wrong door), I met Pani Halina, the musician's wife, a doctor who comes from a prominent Polish family. She was an example of hospitality, feeding me with coffeecake and preserves, chatting but not letting me disturb her husband who as she explained was not feeling well that day. I sighed, but had no right to push my luck any farther. We hugged, and I walked to the door when I looked up the stairs. And there he was, the maestro. He was wearing silky navy blue pajamas with tiny white polka dots and a brown velvet robe with his gray hair nonchalantly combed off his face. He walked down slowly. Standing there, speechless, I was yelled at by Pan Wladek for letting my husband wait in the car while I'm chatting and drinking coffee with his wife. I grabbed my husband and brought him before the man. We were treated to the tour of the memory lane; the grand piano in the corner of the living room had a collection of photographs. Pan Wladek traveled the whole world as a member of the Warsaw Piano Quintet. He traveled everywhere but Australia. He talked about his musician friend Bronislaw Gimpel who lived in LA. We learned his whole family story, about the son who lives in Japan and the other one from Hamburg. He was just as I imagined: wise, dignified, well mannered, and funny above it all. He displayed his disappointment that the American version of his book did not include photographs, as the German edition did. Later, he mentioned that a famous Polish director contacted him about making a movie based on his book but he was very skeptical, it seemed so unreal. So we just laughed. Pan Wladek died the following July at age 88. Three years later, I sat in the West Newton movie theatre watching 6 years of his life before my eyes on a big screen. The famous director's name was Polanski. Pan Wladek's last name was Szpilman and he is the main character behind "The Pianist" now "playing in a theatre near you". In the collaboration of three Poles: Fryderyk Chopin, Wladyslaw Szpilman and Roman Polanski, a masterpiece was created. Palme d'Or for the Best Picture at Cannes' International Film Festival was followed by the Boston Film Critics Award, New York Critics Award, and 7 Oscar nominations. Why this film differs from the Hollywood-made Holocaust movies is for you to find out. In the 80's, the children of the German officer who in the last days of the war offered Szpilman a coat and chose not to kill him, visited Mr.Szpilman in Warsaw. They do not remember their father but learned about Mr.Szpilman from his letters from stalag. The pictures in a photo album beautifully arranged by the officer's daughter in law, showed Mr. Szpilman climbing the stairs to the attic where he hid. The little boy next to him is the grandson of the German officer. Another photograph shows Mr. Szpilman in a beautiful tailored suit and the officer's son exploring together the streets of Warsaw's Old Town. I feel privileged that I had an opportunity to meet Mr.Szpilman, and I feel obligated to share it with you.
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Summary: Inspired by the movie? Read the book.
Review: The book that inspired the movie by Roman Polanski is a good read and complements the movie well. I recommend you see the movie first however, so the surprise ending will not be spoiled for you.
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Summary: A One of a Kind Rebuke to Anti-Polish Prejudices
Review: What makes The Pianist so revolutionary is the way it departs from the usual anti-Polish prejudices of many Holocaust-related materials. For instance, it shows Polish suffering along with Jewish suffering at the hands of the Germans, in stark contrast to Holocaust materials which would make you think that only the Jewish people suffered and died, while Poles were just "spectators". It refrains from demonizing the Poles and manages to put the blame for the Holocaust where it belongs--on the Germans. I wish that more Holocaust materials showed such historical objectivity.
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Summary: Tale of endurance, faith, and hope
Review: In his book The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, Wladyslaw Szpilman writes, "A number of people escaped with their lives during the war because of the cowardice of the Germans, who liked to show courage only when they felt they greatly outnumbered their enemies." Truly and luckily, Szpilman is one among the number. From almost a million Jews population in the city of Warsaw, through "resettlement", human-hunting, and unreasonable decrees; the Germans trimmed the Jewish descent to its bone of merely twenty-five thousand in just 5 years. It is the very cowardice of the Germans, and more importantly the undying will of living that makes Szpilman's survival possible. I'm not in a position to judge the manner of which this book was written, simply because it was Mr. Szpilman's real life story and to whom I shall pay my highest tribute and regard. The prose is written in a very calm voice which somewhat surprises me at the beginning. Later I realize that no sooner had the war ended and the Germans surrendered than Mr. Szpilman wrote this account fresh from memory. It seems to be that Mr. Szpilman was emotionally detached during the writing as he probably had not come back to his senses after the inferno. That also explained why he could accurately recall and date the incidents accordingly. The book itself is emotionally difficult to read and at some points I have to put it down, close my eyes and meditate for a minute. Few of the incidents still capture my mind and bother me after I finish reading: Mr. Szpilman's parting from his family as his parents, brother and sisters were taken away to concentration camp; the clearing of a Jewish orphanage founded by his friend Janusz who stayed his children on their final journey, the Germans (fabricated) video-clipping of Jewish men and women shower naked in public bathhouse to show how immoral and despicable the Jews were; and Mr. Szpilman's fugitive life after his escape from the Germans. Mr. Szpilman attempted suicide but the will for survival overcame the idea. His life took a dramatic turn when Captain Hosenfeld found him in the ruined city of Warsaw and spared his life. Though he never found the man, as Mr. Szpilman reminisced, Hosenfeld was the angel without whom, Mr. Szpilman, a Polish Jew, would probably not have survived at all. During his hiding days, Mr. Szpilman meditated on the music pieces and arduously maintained the hope of playing piano for the Poles again. Mr. Szpilman's account is a stunning tale of endurance, faith, and hope.
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