By November 1940, Szpilman and his family have been forced from their home into the overcrowded
Warsaw Ghetto where conditions only get worse. People starve, the guards are brutal and corpses are left in the streets. On one occasion, the Szpilmans witness the
SS kill an entire family during a
łapanka (raid) in an apartment across the street. In August 16, 1942, the family are
deported to
Treblinka extermination camp, but Szpilman survives at the
Umschlagplatz due to an intervention from a friend in the
Jewish Ghetto Police. Szpilman becomes a
slave labourer and learns of a coming Jewish revolt. He helps by smuggling weapons into the ghetto, narrowly avoiding a suspicious guard. He then manages to escape and goes into hiding with help from non-Jewish friend
Andrzej Bogucki and his wife Janina. In April 1943, from his window, Szpilman observes the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising he aided and its ultimate failure. After a neighbor discovers him, Szpilman is forced to flee and is provided with a second hiding place. He is shown into a room with a piano, yet forced to keep quiet, while beginning to suffer
jaundice.
In August 1944, the
Polish resistance attack a German building across the street from Szpilman's hideout during the
Warsaw Uprising. A tank shells his apartment, forcing him to escape and hide elsewhere. Over the course of the next months, the city is destroyed and abandoned, leaving Szpilman alone to search desperately for shelter and supplies among the ruins. He eventually makes his way to an abandoned home where he finds a can of pickles. While trying to open it he is discovered by the
Wehrmacht officer
Wilm Hosenfeld, who learns that Szpilman is a pianist and asks him to play on a
grand piano in the house. The decrepit Szpilman plays
Chopin's Ballade in G minor, which moves Hosenfeld. He allows Szpilman to hide in the attic of the empty house and regularly brings him food.
In January 1945, the Germans are forced to retreat due to the
advance of the Red Army. Hosenfeld meets Szpilman for the last time and promises he will listen to him on
Polish Radio after the war. He gives Szpilman his
greatcoat to keep warm and leaves. However this has almost fatal consequences for Szpilman when he is mistaken as a German officer and shot at by
Polish troops liberating Warsaw, who then apprehend and save him. In Spring 1945, former inmates of a
Nazi concentration camp pass a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp holding captured German soldiers and verbally abuse them. Hosenfeld, among those captured, overhears a released inmate lament over his former career as a violinist. He asks the violinist if he knows Szpilman, which the violinist confirms. Hosenfeld wishes for Szpilman to return the favor and help release him. Sometime later, the violinist is able to bring Szpilman back to the site but they find it has been long abandoned.
Later, Szpilman performs Chopin's
Grand Polonaise brillante to a large and prestigious audience. An epilogue states that Szpilman died at the age of 88 in 2000, while Hosenfeld died in Soviet
captivity in 1952.
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