Day 68: Watch a Great Movie a Second Time

Today I re-watched a movie called The Pianist. This is a   movie about a Polish piano player, Władysław Szpilman during the Holocaust.  Szpilman managed to escape death and lived until 2000. The story reminds me of the importance of art (music, painting, literature) even in the midst of war.  I had seen the movie years ago and re-watched it because of the impact it had on me. When I read or watch a Holocaust story, I am always struck by the essential recentness of this event. My grandparents were adults.  There were phones, and cars, and records, and movies and celebrities. There were refrigerators and roads and radios. This wasn’t ancient history; it was literally just a few decades ago. Can we ensure something like this never happens again? I really don’t know.    

Here is an excerpt from his biography:

Everyone in his family was deported in 1942 an extermination camp in the East. Szpilman managed to flee from the transport loading site with the help of a family acquaintance who grabbed him from the crowd and shooed him away from the waiting train. His name was Itzchak Heller and he worked as a Jewish policeman in the ghetto. None of Szpilman's family members survived the war. Szpilman was left in the ghetto as a laborer and helped smuggle in weapons for the coming Jewish resistance uprising. He avoided capture and death by the Germans several times. Szpilman remained in the Warsaw Ghetto until it was abolished after the deportation of most of its inhabitants and went into hiding.
As set out in his memoir, Szpilman found places to hide in Warsaw and survived with the help of his friends from Polish Radio and fellow musicians. In November 1944, Szpilman was hiding out in an abandoned building when he was found by a German officer. Surprisingly, the officer did not kill Szpilman, but instead after finding out that he was a pianist, asked Szpilman to play for him on a piano they had found. After that, the officer showed Szpilman a better place to hide and brought him bread and jam on numerous occasions. He also offered Szpilman one of his coats to keep warm in the freezing temperatures.