Brianna Hofman

His 361 Paper 2

The Risk of Survival

Every memory of the Holocaust has a different story to tell. That is because

everyone had experienced the Nazi removal of Jews, known as the Holocaust, differently.

And some of the survivors have recollected these memories to show what they had to go

through and their experience. One of these stories can be remembered through the movie

The Pianist (2002) directed by Roman Polanski, based on the memoir written by the

Holocaust survivor, Wladyslaw Szpilman. The movie takes the audience on the journey

of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish Polish pianist, and all the hardships he had to endure

during the time of Germany occupation of Poland and the Nazi Germany expulsion of

Jews. The film shows what it took for a Jewish man in Warsaw to escape death and the

tribulations he had to through in order to survive. In a journal article written by Alexander

Stein titled Music and Trauma in Polanskis The Pianist, he writes that the film is an

intimately personal and, thus, painful document of the horrors of traumatic isolation, loss,

suffering, and ultimate survival (Stein, 443). Through the movie The Pianist, Polanski

wants his audience to imagine and feel what it took to survive the Holocaust in Warsaw

through the eyes of Wladyslaw Szpilman and the hardships that he had to face by

showing the amount of dead bodies everywhere, the lack of food available, and the

physical toll on his body.

Wladyslaw Szpilman had to overcome many sufferings in order to make survival

possible for himself. One of those ways was by becoming numb to his surroundings and

from seeing people dying or already dead all around him. Since the beginning of when
Szpilman entered the Warsaw Ghetto, he had to walk over and around people who were

lying on the ground dying from starvation. It was starting to become normal and a part of

everyday life if a person saw a dead body on the ground. Seeing people starved to death

was only the beginning, Szpilman then started to see people getting pushed out of their

wheelchair over a balcony and their family getting dragged outside to only be shot by the

Nazis. Him and his family had to walk past several bloodstained bodies lying on the

ground on countless times. In an article named The Atheists Shoah- Roman Polanskis

The Pianist written by Christos Tsiolkas, he writes about how through his [Szpilmans]

eyes we begin to slowly understand the magnitude of the violence occurring around him

(Tsiolkas, The Atheists Shoah: Roman Polanskis The Pianist). One of the only ways

to cope with this violence and seeing people being shot and dead lying on the ground is to

become numb to it. Polanski shows his audience that becoming numb to the dead bodies

allowed Szpilman to distance himself from the ones on the ground allowing him keep on

pursuing survival.

While being numb to the dead surrounding him, Wladyslaw Szpilman had to also

endure the hardships of eating and drinking whatever he could get. Polanski shows this

when Szpilman is hiding in one the flats and the people looking over havent been able to

stop by in a couple of weeks and the camera focuses on a sprout-filled, pruned-up potato.

Szpilman picks of the overgrown sprouts and cuts the old potato because it is the only

food he has to eat or he will starve. Later in the film, Szpilman was in an old abandoned

German hospital looking for any source of food and water. He came across a bucket of

some unknown liquid and started to drink out of this bucket because of how thirsty he

had become. These scenes show one had become so desperate for food and water that he
had to endure eating rotten food and drinking disgusting water. Wladyslaw Szpilman was

able to survive the Holocaust by suffering through eating rotten food and drinking

appalling water because the lack of food and water available.

A unique way Polanski focuses on Szpilmans survival throughout the film is his

distance from a Jewish identity and identifies himself more with being a Polish pianist.

The people around him in society even saw Szpilman as a Polish pianist and rather they

saw him as something greater than Jewish. This can be seen in the scene where Szpilman

and his family are being deported to the trains, and a member of the Jewish police, who

also knew Szpilman, pulled Szpilman from the group and threw him off to the side

because he knew Szpilman was better than dying in the concentration camps. Another

unique way of Szpilmans identity as a Polish pianist led to his survival was one of the

last scenes of the film. A Nazi German officer came into a house that Szpilman was in

trying to open up a can, and he asks Szpilman What are you doing here? and he also

proceeds to ask what he does as a living in which Szpilman replies I amI was a

pianist. The German captain asks Szpilman to play for him and is blown away by the

performance that he lets Szpilman stay in the attic and even brings him food. Alexander

Stein argues, It is not that he is making music which is so important, but that his music-

making is head (Stein, 451). The German officer let Szpilman survive because of the

song he played, but because of his identity of a pianist and his incredible ability to play

that he believes should be heard. Polanski shows that Szpilmans belief of identifying as a

Polish pianist rather so much as a Jewish identity, allowed for Szpilmans survival

through the Holocaust.

 In the movie The Pianist, Roman Polanski drove his audience on this struggling

journey of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jewish pianist in Warsaw and through his eyes

the audience imagines and feels what it took for him to survive the Holocaust. Szpilman

had to overcome many obstacles that were put in front of him in order to survive and one

wrong movement, sound, or action could have had him killed. In the article written by

Christos Tsiolkas, he writes Polanski makes it clear that it is opportunity and chance that

has saved Szpilmans life (Tsiolkas, The Atheists Shoah). Even if Szpilman became

numb to seeing people dying in front of him, eat rotten food or starve, or identified more

as a Polish pianist, he could have still died with the Holocaust if he did one little thing

differently. Surviving the Holocaust was not easy and many did not achieve that goal, but

Polanski gives the audience the determination of what it took for Wladyslaw Szpilman to

survive.
 Bibliography

Stein, Alexander, Music and Trauma in Polanskis The Pianist, Psychoanalytic Inquiry

27, no. 4 (2007)

Tsiolkas, Christos, The Atheists Shoah: Roman Polanskis The Pianist, Senses of

Cinema, (May 2003): Accessed online:

http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/feature-

articles/pianist/