Wladyslaw Szpilman was a talented Pianist among his community. When Adolf Hitler's ultimate goal of exterminating the Jewish race began to show its true form, Wladyslaw Szpilman along with an estimated 400,000 other Jewish people, were relocated to a small, densely populated, walled-in area of Warsaw known as the Warsaw Ghetto. As time went on and the Jewish population began being shipped off to work or die at concentration camps, a member of the Jewish Police (A forced policing agent comprised of Jewish people) Jerzy Lewinski recognized Wladyslaw in the line to be deported and pulled him and his family out. Wladyslaw would spend the next year working as a laborer in Warsaw and secretly helping smuggle weapons for the Jewish Resistance. After the deportation of most of its inhabitants in May 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto effectively was abolished. Szpilman continued to hide in Warsaw with help from his connections to the Polish Radio and fellow musicians. In November 1944, Szpilman was discovered by a German Captain Wilm Hosenfeld. Rather killing or arresting the man, the German asked Szpilman to confirm his identity by playing a nearby piano. Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor. Intrigued and humbled, the German officer brought Szpilman to a better place to hide, brought him food on multiple occasions, and gave him one of his coats so he could keep warm in the freezing weather. After being liberated Szpilman desperately tried to locate and rescue Hosenfeld, but unfortunately he died in a Soviet POW camp in 1952. Like other great German soldiers and officers who were put under Nazi control during World War 2, (In the sense they continued to serve for their country even thought they didn't politically agree with the new government, an example would be the renown humanitarian Erwin Rommel) Wilm Hosenfeld acted humanely to a man who he was ordered to hate. An exemplary instance of humanity in war, Wilm Hosenfeld's actions saved the life of a great Pianist and left an example of how respect for human life can triumph the hatred of others.
Wilm Hosenfeld
Wilm Hosenfeld