The Pianist

When Polish Radio was forced to close down due to the shells of the Nazis in September 1939, the last live music on the radio was Wladyslaw Szpilman's performance of a Chopin nocturne. When they recommenced broadcasting in 1945 Szpilman opened proceedings with the same nocturne. What happened to Szpilman in the intervening years forms one of the most harrowing accounts of Me in the Warsaw Ghetto, told here in an extraordinary way. Unlike most Holocaust memoirs written some years or even decades after the events, Szpilman wrote the book immediately after the war, probably still in deep shock. He describes situations and events in a detached manner, without showing any feeling of resentment or thirst for revenge. It is this dispassionate style that makes his incredible story so compelling.