The Pianist

‘Music was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece.’


Grade Level: 9-12, college

Subject: History, Music, Current Events

Keywords: Lesson Plan, Movies in the Classroom, holocaust, attic, based-on-autobiography, based-on-true-story, deportation, execution, fugitive-from-nazi, genocide, gestapo, ghettoization, hiding-place, humiliation, hunger, jaundice, luggage, murder, music, nazi-occupied-poland, nazi, piano-concerto, piano-player, piano, polish-resistance, starvation, tank, underground-resistance, violence, warsaw-ghetto, wheelchair, wwii, 1930s, 1940s, anti-semitism, concert, contraband, freight-train, historical, hospital, jewish, mass-murder, mistaken-identity, musician, pianist, police-brutality, prisoner-of-war, radio-broadcasting, restaurant, rooftop, separation-from-family, wall, war-crime, warsaw-poland, whipping, panzer.

Author: Sarah Lane

Affiliation: ClassBrain, Inc.

Date: 6 May 2003

Duration: 1-4 class periods

Background: Based on a true story. A Polish Jewish musician struggles to survive the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto of World War II. Wladyslaw Szpilman, a brilliant Polish pianist escaped deportation and is forced to live in the heart of the Warsaw Ghetto. As he is hiding in the ruins of the capitol, a German officer comes to his aid and helps him to survive. Wladyslaw Szpilman published Death of a City in 1946, which recounts his experience, including life in the ghetto and how it was for the victims and the torturers. The work was banned by the communist authorities. In 1998, his son Andrzej Szpilman discovered the manuscript of his father’s memoirs which led to a new publication of the work. It was first translated and published in France as The Pianist.