36 pages • 1 hour read
Władysław SzpilmanThe Pianist
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1946A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Władysław Szpilman
Władysław Szpilman is a Polish pianist and composer who writes The Pianist to detail his experiences in Warsaw during WWII. He is a fairly well-known musician working at Polish Radio at the time of the German invasion of Poland. As a Jew, he is forced to move into the Warsaw ghetto along with his parents and three siblings. When the radio broadcasting station is destroyed, Władysław continues to exercise his musical craft by playing in several of the cafes in the ghetto.He is a member of the “intelligentsia,” an intellectual and artistic class who remain separate from the less financially secure Jews in the ghetto. Though the Szpilmans are not extremely wealthy, Władysław’s status as a musician garners him some of this social status.
Towards the beginning of the memoir, Władysław has a strong sense of pride about his identity as a musician, intellectual, and Polish Jew. Though the Germans slowly chip away at the Jews’ rights and sense of humanity, Władysław tries his best to sidestep regulations and avoid compromising any of his pride in the face of the Germans. He has a strong will for self-preservation and the protection of his family.
As more and more Jews are sent to the camps, Władysław’s stoic character is shaken. The whole family is set to board a train for the concentration camps, but a Jewish policeman pulls Władysław back. He is separated from his family, his core support group, and soon after realizes that the Germans are exterminating the Jews, and he will never see his family again. This realization upsets his worldview greatly, and he spends the rest of the war moving through many ups and downs of hope and despair. At some points he expresses astaunch will to live;at others,he expresses an acceptance of the possibility or inevitability of his death. Władysław remains in Warsaw, hiding first at apartments of colleagues and acquaintances, then in abandoned buildings. His physical situation becomes more and more dire, and he subsists on smaller and smaller amounts of food and water.
Facing starvation in the winter of 1944, the German solider Wilm Hosenfeld aids him with supplies, and Władysław survives in hiding until the German defeat in January 1945.
Henryk Szpilman
Like his brother,Władysław, Henryk is a man of integrity and strong morals. He strongly resists the encroachment of the Germans and resents the way in which they chip away at his sense of self. As Władysław says, “Henryk’s life was a hard one” (71). Many advise him to join the Jewish Police, where he could remain safe and earn a good living. He refuses to compromise his morals, however, and instead teaches English and trades books every morning (while in the ghetto) in Nowolipki Street. Władysław notes, “If, as an intellectual, he could have no other contact with books then at least he would have this” (71).Henryk, along with his parents and sisters, are sent to the Treblinka concentration camp and murdered.
Father Szpilman
Władysław’s father is musically inclined and plays the violin. Throughout the time in the ghetto, Father “was not inclined to brood, and was more likely to try overwhelming us with good news instead” (72). He does his best to keep his spirits up. Rather than avoiding Germans at all costs like his sons, Father bows to them and smiles at them ironically in the streets. When Germans detain him and his sons, he weeps and begs for his life. Władysław judges him for this display of weakness. Father dies in Treblinka with the rest of his family.
Wilm Hosenfeld
Wilm Hosenfeld is a German soldier who aids Władysław during the final days of the war. Before the war, he is an “enthusiastic, warm-hearted teacher” (216). He leaves a wife and two sons to go fight with the Germans. He is a devout Catholic and strongly opposes Hitler’s campaign, noting that “now we have blood-guilt on our conscience for the dreadful injustice of murdering the Jewish inhabitants” (197). Hosenfeld aids several Jews throughout the course of the war, noting them all down in a letter he sends to his wife. He dies in a prisoner of war camp in Stalingrad in 1952 without ever reconnecting with Władysław.
