Composer, pianist and arranger.
In 1940, Szpilman was resettled in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he worked as a café pianist. During the Great Deportation, his entire family—his parents Samuel and Edward, his sisters Halina and Regina, and his brother Henryk—were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. Szpilman almost shared their fate, but was rescued at the last minute from the Umschlagplatz by a Jewish policeman. A year later, he managed to reach the so-called Aryan side, where he hid with the help of friendly Poles and the Żegota organization. After the Warsaw Uprising, he remained in the ruins of the house at 223 Niepodległości Avenue, where Wehrmacht Captain Wilm Hosenfeld found him and, instead of betraying him, began supplying him with food.
Szpilman's fate up to this point is well known to anyone who has seen Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film "The Pianist." It's also worth remembering his postwar musical activities, which include the reactivation of ZAiK in 1956 and the organization of the International Song Festival in Sopot in the summer of 1961.
Władysław Szpilman died at the age of 88 on July 6, 2000. He was buried at the Powązki Military Cemetery.
Photo: Władysław Szpilman | Public domain.
