Music: A Saving Grace

Wladyslaw Szpilman played his piano on September 23, 1939, the day Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The Second World War is a horrible chapter in world history that determined the survival of many Polish citizens. Wladyslaw Szpilman was able to live his life both before and after the German invasion with music.

The Szpilman family lived in an upper class Jewish Warsaw neighborhood during the middle of the twentieth century. The Szpilman's were well educated and respected in their neighborhood. The eldest Szpilman played the violin while the other children worked in town as lawyers or teachers. Music was always heard in the house. Wladyslaw and his father were professional musicians. In an ironic twist, the younger Szpilman learned to play the piano in pre-Nazi Germany.

Wladyslaw could be heard playing his music on the Polish radio station. The radio station was not run by the oppressed Jewish majority. The German military movement towards Poland disrupted schedules and employees of the radio station. Wladyslaw remembers the changing of directors;"I had heard the radio station was broadcasting again, under a new director, Edmund Rudnicki, who used to be head of the music department (Szpilman 35)." The pianist would play in a quiet room for hours escaping the horrors of the anti-Semitic world outside. Many people escaped the horrors of German Warsaw through the strategically placed speakers throughout the town.

If people in Warsaw wanted more of the pianist's music they could hear his arrangements in cafes, "...behind the darkened walls of cafes and bars where the costumers drank [and] danced (Szpilman 22)." The escape, for the Jewish citizens became a place for business as well as pleasure. Some men used the café where the author worked as a testing ground for gold. The costumers became irritated when Szpilman played his piano. The gold, we all know, at its purest, makes a distinct sound. The sound was not heard well in the mists of the narrator's music. The businessmen praised Wladyslaw for his break in performance. The author was not fazed by the unrehearsed break. He realized it was a place of business where Jewish Poles could do business without worrying about their identification cards or their new arm bands.

The patrons of the café, though, did not always ask the musician to stop playing his music. At one point, the narrator has to speed up a piece to hear news about his brother, Henryk.