Still, Szpilman made his way to the building and, amongst a crowd of prisoners being herded into captivity, managed to find the deputy director of the labour bureau.

After much effort, Szpilman managed to extract from him a promise that Henryk would be home by that night, which he was.

After six days searching and deal making, Szpilman managed to procure six work certificates, enough for his entire family.

Through Majorek, Szpilman managed to arrange his escape from the ghetto.

When, again, he went searching for food and drink, Szpilman managed to find some crusts of bread to eat and a fire bucket full of water.

Food and drink were scarce in the hospital, and for the first four or five days of his stay in the building, Szpilman couldn ’ t find anything.

So, at great risk, Szpilman came down from the attic to find a working oven in one of the flats.

He helped Szpilman find a ladder amongst the apartments and helped him climb up into the loft.

Although after this disappointment Szpilman did everything in his power to find the officer, it took him five years even to discover his name, Wilm Hosenfeld.

Szpilman and his family did not yet need to find a new residence, as their apartment was already in the ghetto area.

On his way to or from work, Szpilman would sometimes pass by the wall during smuggling hours.

In addition to the methods of smuggling mentioned previously, Szpilman observed many child smugglers at work.

Szpilman got work to keep himself safe.

Whilst doing this new work, Szpilman was permitted to go out into the Gentile side of Warsaw.

After his work on the wall Szpilman survived another selection in the ghetto and was sent to work on many different tasks, such as cleaning out the yard of the Jewish council building.

His work focusing on this period includes the films Operation Daybreak ( covering the assassination by the Czechoslovakian Resistance of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich ), The Statement ( a fictionalized account of the post-War life-on-the-run of French collaborator Paul Touvier ), The Pianist ( an adaptation of the autobiography of the Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman covering his survival during the Nazi occupation of Poland ), the play later adapted to film Taking Sides ( focused on the post-War " de-Nazification " investigation of the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler ), the play Collaboration ( about the composer Richard Strauss and his partnership with the Jewish writer Stefan Zweig ), and the play An English Tragedy ( dealing with the British fascist John Amery ).

The officer, learning that he was a musician, had asked him if he knew Władysław Szpilman.

* The Pianist ( memoir ), a book by Władysław Szpilman about himself, a Polish-Jewish musician, who survived the Holocaust

Szpilman ’ s family ( he was living with his parents, his brother Henryk and his sisters Regina and Halina ) were amongst those who did not.

To avoid the concentration camps, rich, intellectual Jews like Szpilman ’ s family and many of his acquaintances could pay to have poorer Jews deported in their place.

Szpilman ’ s family was lucky to already be living in the ghetto area when the plans were announced.

Szpilman and his family were fortunate to live in the small ghetto, which was less crowded and dangerous than the other.

Soon after they arrived, Szpilman ’ s family was reunited.

Szpilman describes his last moments with his family :< p > By the time we had made our way to the train the first trucks were already full.

Szpilman never saw any members of his family again.

Władysław Szpilman and his family, along with all other Jews living in Warsaw, were forced to move into a " Jewish District "— the Warsaw Ghetto — on 31 October 1940.

Along with him, the Szpilman family and thousands of others asked that Hosenfeld be honoured in this way for his acts of kindness throughout the war.

Because of Stalinist cultural policy, and the ostensibly " grey areas " in which Szpilman ( Waldorff ) asserted that not all Germans were bad and not all of the oppressed were good, the actual book remained sidelined for more than 50 years.

Szpilman played piano at an expensive café which pandered to the ghetto ’ s upper class, made up largely of smugglers and other war profiteers, and their wives or mistresses.

Eventually, Szpilman was posted to a steady job as “ storeroom manager .” In this position, Szpilman organised the stores at the SS accommodation, which his group was preparing.

From the window of the flat in which he was hiding, Szpilman had a good vantage point from which to watch the beginnings of the rebellion.

Hiding in a predominantly German area, however, Szpilman was not in a good position to go out and join the fighting: first he would need to get past several units of German soldiers who were holding the area against the main power of the rebellion, which was based in the city centre.

As soon as he took the sleeping pills, which acted almost instantly on his empty stomach, Szpilman fell asleep.

On 30 August, Szpilman moved back into his old building, which by this time had entirely burnt out.

Here, in larders and bathtubs ( which, due to the ravages of the fire, were now open to the air ) Szpilman found bread and rainwater, which kept him alive.

By October 14 Szpilman and the German army were all but the only humans still living in Warsaw, which had been completely destroyed by the Germans.

Szpilman is widely known as the protagonist of the 2002 Roman Polanski film The Pianist, which is based on his memoir of the same name recounting his survival of the German occupation of Warsaw and the Holocaust.

A member of the Jewish Police ( Itzchak Heller ) pulled Szpilman from a line of people — including his parents, brother, and two sisters — being loaded onto a train at the transport site ( which, as in other ghettos, was called the Umschlagplatz ).

In 1963, Szpilman and Gimpel founded the Warsaw Piano Quintet, with which Szpilman performed worldwide until 1986.

When not touring or building pianos, he has been editing piano editions of the works of Władysław Szpilman for Boosey and Hawkes and wrote a piece on aesthetics, which was published in Poland in March 2005.

In 1998, Szpilman ’ s son Andrzej Szpilman republished the memoir of his father ’ s, first in German as Das wunderbare Überleben (" The Miraculous Survival ") and then in English as The Pianist.

They hid their money in the window frame, an expensive gold watch under their cupboard and the watch ’ s chain beneath the fingerboard of Szpilman ’ s father ’ s violin.