ThePianist_TheExtraordinaryTrueStoryofOn.epub

Foreword Until a few years ago my father never spoke of his wartime experiences. Yet they had been my companions since childhood. Through this book, which I surreptitiously took from a corner of our bookshelves when I was twelve years old, I discovered why I had no paternal grandparents and why my father never talked about his family. The book revealed a part of my own identity to me. I knew he knew I had read it, but we never discussed it, and perhaps for that reason it never struck me that the book could be of any significance to other people - something pointed out by my friend Wolf Biermann when I told him my father's story. I've lived in Germany for many years, and I am always conscious of the painful absence of communication between Jews and the Germans and Poles. I hope this book will help to close some of the wounds that are still open. My father Wladyslaw Szpilman is not a writer. By profession he is what they call in Poland 'a man in whom music lives': a pianist and composer who has always been an inspiring and significant figure in Polish cultural life. My father completed his piano studies with Arthur Schna-bel at t......