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The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945

The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945

List Price: $13.00
Your Price: $9.75
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Book For All
Review: I was thirteen when The Pianist movie was made. I begged my parents to let me see it, and I finally watched it at age fourteen. That night, I could not sleep. I had heard of the Holocaust before and we had studied it in 8th grade and I had seen movies about it, but there was something so gripping about this man's story that it seemed to be in another league of any Holocaust story I had ever heard about or seen.
The movie piqued my intrest in the Holocaust and also in this incredible man who survived all odds. A few months after I had watched the movie, I went out and bought the book. After I started the book, I could hardly put it down. I finished the book in two days, facing another two sleepless nights, haunted by his passages from Dancing on Chlorea Street, and feeling his emotions as he ran into Captain Wilm Hosenfeld for the first time.
I would recommend this book to anyone, no matter the age. The book is truly haunting and Wladyslaw Szpilman's words and memories are bound to stay with you.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Touching Memoir
Review: The Pianist, by Wladyslaw Szpilman, is the story of the author's life in war torn Warsaw from 1939 to 1945. During this time, he went from being one of the leading concert pianists in Poland to someone who was forced to live in an attic, eating scraps of food and drinking dirty water in order to survive. His family was taken from him, his friends, his way of life, but he survived and outlived the brutal Nazi Regime that did all it could to destroy him. Written in the first person shortly after the end of World War II, the Pianist is an extremely well written story and should be read by those who enjoyed the movie, and by those who are interested in learning about the Holocaust. I highly recommend it.

For some reason, only three stars show above. However, I gave this book a rating of five stars.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Humanity survives amidst savage cruelty
Review: I can't really add anything to the other reviews, but what I liked the best is the short addition of Capt. Wilm Hosenfeld's journal (1942-44) in which we see even among the Nazi's there was room for humanity.

It's ironic that Szpilman's salvation came not through his countrymen, but from the assistance of a compassionate enemy - first, when he is thrown out of the crowds getting ready to board the trains headed for the camps by a Jewish policeman, and second by Hosenfeld who provided food, a coat and an eiderdown at a time when starvation, cold and exhaustion was ready to claim Szpilman.

My only regret is not knowing how to pronounce the many Polish names in the book. We see the war clearly and much more explicit than any movie could ever portray. There is no clever imagery here, only the stark reality of words from an eyewitness to the insanity of war.

An epilogue by Wolf Biermann provides further insight to Hosenfeld's fate after the war and Szpilman's tireless, but ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to obtain Hosenfeld's release from a Russian gulag.

I hope that one day school children are introduced to Szpilman's journal and it will one day be as well known as the Diary of Anne Frank.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Moved Beyond Words
Review: After watching the movie, I was compelled to read the book immediately; I had to read the author's first-hand account of his experience. Szpilman's words were simple yet poignant. Like the film, the book conveyed the horror and atrocities without any pretense or manipulation. There was almost a journalistic feel to the book -- just the facts, ma'am. However, do not doubt his pain throughout this time. That is the most real fact of all.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Poignant and Enjoyable
Review: In The Pianist, Wladyslaw Szpielman recounts his struggle for survival in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII.

Because I am Jewish, this book was very poignant to me.

I read this book and watched the movie and wrote a paper comparing the two forms for my college lit class.

When reading this book there were times I was so angry I wanted to throw it across the room, times I nearly cried and even times I laughed!

It is ironic because although there is so much death, the theme of this book is life. It is a man's determination to survive.

Along with Schindler's List and The Diary of Anne Frank, this is one of the really good Holocaust books that we all need to learn about so that such a tragedy may never happen again.

Read it!


Rating: 2 stars
Summary: To Be Honest...
Review: I do feel that this book is good, but the detail in this book is far to scarce for a subject so strong. Sometimes the lack of detail makes you skip over very imprortant parts of the story, and the writer just made all of the events feel like nothing happened, and he never tell you how he felt in that situation.

A good book, but not quite there.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Required Holocaust reading
Review: I became interested in reading "The Pianist" after seeing the excellent movie, directed by Roman Polanski, that was based on the book. After thoroughly enjoying the movie, I had very high hopes for this book, and I was not disappointed. This book is a stunner, bringing to life the horrific conditions and brutality that Wladyslaw Szpilman endured to survive six years of Nazi brutality in Warsaw, Poland.

What's truly amazing about this book is how Szpilman tells the story with a sense of detachment - the barbaric killing that he sees up close; his final moments with his family, when he realizes shortly after they are gone that will never see them again; his witnessing the piles and piles of corpses; and mindless executions for some minor infraction, etc. Szpilman writes it all in stunning, unforgetable prose. It baffles the mind how he was able to keep his wits about him and survive after suffering and witnessing such unspeakable horrors at the hands of such barbarians, and in the end his survival may well have hinged on the kindness of a Nazi Captain, Wilm Hosenfeld.

The fact that a Nazi helped him live is too unbelievable to be fiction after all that Szpilman had witnessed and endured - it must be true, and this story is. The Pianist is a remarkable story that will be every bit as powerful hundreds of years from now. The Washington Post calls this book "historically indispensable," and that is right on the mark. The book sits along side Anne Frank's tome as required Holocaust reading.

Adding excerpts of Hosenfeld's diary at the end of the book makes this read all the more powerful. Hosenfeld's story is an amazing one, in the vein of Oskar Schindler, since he, like Schindler, did much to save many jews. Hosenfeld's diary entries in the back of the book add much to the story and torpedoes the assumption that every single Nazi had no heart and enjoyed the killings (although an overwhelming majority did, in this reviewer's opinion).

This book is invaluable to Holocaust scholars and World War II students alike. And since I watched the movie before I read the book, I can attest that the movie was right on the mark in terms of accuracy. Very highly recommended reading.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Similar thoughts about 'Nazi Officer's Wife'
Review: Sadly, neither of the biographies should ever have happened. But since they did, the courage displayed by telling the story will hopefully give us all pause and thwart history repeating itself.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: For those who doubt the Holocaust......
Review: After watching the movie adaptation on DVD I was so moved that I wanted to read the book. I went to my local library and found, much to my amazement, that the system did not have a copy of this book. I recommended that it be purchased and was the first to read the sole copy once it arrived (OK.... I live in a small county!).

What can I say. This book captures, in a vividness that is shocking, the envelopment of evil in Europe during Word War II. The Nazis were of course the primary perpetrators but the book also shows that no one (including some Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, etc) were immune to committing these atrocities. Evil is an equal opportunity employer......

While Mr. Polanski did an exceedingly fantastic job of being true to the book - as with all books - there is a much bigger picture of what really happened.

Another great book that I would highly recommend regarding the Holocaust is "The Hiding Place" by Corie Ten Boom. This moving biography tells the story of Corrie's Christian family who tried to hide Jews from there Nazi persecutors.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Survival of the Witness
Review: Being the wartime memoir of real-life pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, the book traces a single man, surviving on wits and luck through the dark, cruel years of World War II Poland. Szpilman is a classical pianist whose middle-class, affluent Jewishness is not much of a liability until the Nazis arrive. From that point on, he and his family endure the slow tightening of the Nazi noose -- yellow armbands and petty restrictions -- leading up to the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto and the deportation of his family to the death camps.

"The Pianist" serves up a hellish brew of bizarre images that if they were not witnessed, would not be believed. The Polish partisan shot in the back and slumping to her knees in the street; the communion-like division of a tiny dime-candy among 6 doomed people; the Bizarre Waltz forced by bored Nazi guards on Jews waiting to cross a barred street; the young lad beaten to death trying to crawl through a storm drain; starving elderly Jewish workers fighting over a pot of beans. These are powerful images that convince because of their relative insignificance. The Holocaust and resistance were a compendium of such small yet telling moments of horror.

The book ends with a short biography of German Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, the man who fed Szpliman as the war was winding down. Hosenfeld's basic humanity was in counterpoint the senseless viloence and butchery of so many other German soldiers during the war. His kindness is especially poignant becuuse of his own suffereings after the war.The Pianist brings to the screen the memories of a man who survived two of the most extraordinary events of the war -- the liquidation of the ghetto and the Warsaw uprising. It's a testament to the thousands and millions who played their small parts in a gigantic drama that shaped the last century.

"The Pianist" is a fine companion to the Oscar-winning movie of the same name, bringing to life many of the book's indelible images.


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