Shpilman, Vladislav

Early life

Vladislav Shpilman was born on December 5, 1911 in Sosnowiec to the Jewish family of Shmuel (Samuel) and Esther (Eduard) Shpilmanov ^[5] . He had a brother Henryk and sisters Regina and Galina. He graduated from the Music University named after Frederic Chopin under the direction of Alexander Mikhalovsky . In 1931, he won a scholarship to the Berlin Academy of Music: the piano class of Arthur Schnabel and the composition class of Franz Schrecker. In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, he returned to Poland and worked on the Warsaw radio. Until 1939 he was engaged in composing symphonic music and film music. Before the war, he gave concerts along with world-famous violinists such as Roman Totenberg , Bronislaw Gimpel , Henrik Schering and Ida Handel , and worked on Polish radio at the same time.

World War II

After Germany occupied Poland in 1939 (on September 23, 1939 Shpilman played his last live concert on the radio, after which the Polish radio stopped working), the Shpilman family ended up in the Warsaw ghetto in 1940 (their house was on one of the streets given away under the ghetto, therefore, unlike others, they did not have to move). On August 16, 1942, the family underwent selection, after which Vladislav, his parents and Regina were recognized as incapable of work, and they were to be sent to Treblinka . On August 19, they went to the Transhipment Point. When Henryk and Galina found out about this, they joined them, despite the fact that both were not yet to be sent. While loading the train, one of the Jewish policemen, Yitzhak Heller, who was a friend of Shpilmanov, pushed Vladislav out of the crowd, separating him from his family. He no longer saw his parents, sisters and brother. According to Vladislav’s memoirs, he didn’t find any records about their fate - after the war he could not overpower himself and go to Treblinka to look for references in the archives.

After that, Vladislav worked as a builder and miraculously escaped death several times during the next selection. When the deportation of the remaining Jews was tightened again, Shpilman escaped from the ghetto in February 1943, and wandered around friends on Polish Radio (including Andrzej Bogutsky and his wife Janina), who were sheltering him in various apartments, until the Warsaw uprising . His last shelter was an apartment in the city center - exactly where everything was populated by the Gestapo. Despite the request of friends to wait in the basement of the house for the Warsaw Uprising, Shpilman spent most of this time in the apartment and, in case of danger, hid in the attic. On August 12, the house was set on fire, and Shpilman, under the threat of suffocation, tried to poison himself with pre-stored sleeping pills, but remained alive. After the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, he remained virtually one of the few Warsaw downtown. He hid from the Gestapo in a nearby hospital and other destroyed houses and suffered from malnutrition. Finally, in November, he took refuge in a building where a German officer Wilhelm Hosenfeld found him, as they were planning to deploy the Warsaw German defense headquarters in this building. He covered Shpilman on the mezzanine under the roof and, right up to the complete retreat of the Germans from Warsaw, secretly carried him food.

After the war

After the war ended, for 20 years, Spielman worked on the Warsaw radio, he also continued to perform as a pianist. Shpilman wrote new symphonic works, as well as about a thousand songs. Among them are Rain, Nobody Will Return These Years, No Happiness Without Love, I Don't Believe the Song ( Edita Peha ), Portrait of Pablo Picasso ( Funny Guys , Eugene Osin ), Red Bus "( Edita Pieha )," Silent Night "," The time will come "," Tomorrow will be a good day. " He composed more than fifty songs for children, music for many radio shows and films, as well as the call signs of Polish newsreels. Together with Bronislaw Gimpel and Tadeusz Vronsky, they created the Warsaw Quintet, giving more than two thousand concerts in various countries.

After the war, Spielman wrote memoirs based on the recollections of his experiences during the war. In the literary editing by Jerzy Waldorff, entitled “The death of the city”, they were published in 1946 in Poland. Based on this book, the film was directed by Roman Polanski, “The Pianist ” ( 2002 ). In 1998, with the assistance of his son Andrzej, a reprint was published - “The Pianist: An Extraordinary and True Story of the Survival of One Person in Warsaw 1939-1945”. This edition has been translated into 38 languages ​​of the world.

In 1950, he married Galina Gzhezhnarovskaya. Two sons were born in the marriage: Krzysztof and Andrzej , who later became a famous musician.

Songs

• Information and Biography
• Pianist. Warsaw diaries 1939-1945
• Review of Vladislav Shpilman's book “The Pianist” in the magazine “People of the Book in the World of Books”