Wladyslaw Szpilman

Survivor

 

Hello everyone! My name is Sam Polczynski, and I chose to research Wladyslaw Szpilman.  Some of you may know him as the protagonist in The Pianist and others may know nothing at all.  I chose to share his story because like him, I share a passion for music and since I had some sort of connection to him, I wanted others to learn about him.  I shared his story through a Facebook post because I thought that it would be interesting to spread his story in a 21st-century style.  After posting his story and making a playlist on Youtube of his songs,  I tracked the post with my friends and the friends of my friends. 

 

Here is what I posted online for everyone to read:

 

Hello people of Facebook!  I am doing an outreach project for my English Honors Class on individuals who had roles to play in the Holocaust.  I chose to learn about Wladyslaw Szpilman.  Some may know him as the protagonist in The Pianist while others may know nothing at all.  For those who do not know or cannot remember, Szpilman is a Holocaust Survivor.  Szpilman, who lived in Poland before the Holocaust, performed as a musician and a composer.  After the Nazis had invaded, Szpilman, along with his family and countless other Jews, were forced into the Warsaw ghettos.  When the time came for the ghettos to be liquidated and the prisoners were to be sent to the death camp Treblinka, Szpilman was only saved because there were some who recognized him as a talented pianist.  He was able to hide out for most of the war, but after Warsaw had been heavily bombed, Szpilman was on his own and was starving.  He was then luckily saved by the kindness of the German Wehrmacht officer Wilm Hosenfeld.  The officer recognized Szpilman, and instead of turning him in, he asked Szpilman to play a piece on the piano for him.  Once again, Szpilman was able to survive because of his talent and the kindheartedness of others.  When I learned of his story, I thought that it was truly amazing.  Hitler tried to destroy every aspect of the Jewish culture, but thanks to survivors like Szpilman, it has been able to live on.  Szpilman went on with his musical career after the Holocaust and composed multiple different works.  The world would not be the same place without him, his works, or any of the other survivors.  The reason I have shared this with you is because I want you to think about what else the world could have had, if only all of those lives had not been lost.  I ask you to spread his story and below there is a link to a youtube playlist that I put together of songs he composed and the song he played for the German soldier.  Also, please help me track the spread of his story and the story of everything else the world lost with the hashtag #whatdidwelose and feel free to add other related hashtags.  All the information I collected came from the USHMM website (ushmm.org) and www.szpilman .net, a website run by Szpilman’s son.