Today marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Władysław Szpilman, the Polish pianist and composer of Jewish birth, whose autobiographical book describing how he survived the Holocaust was made into the Oscar-winning film The Pianist by Roman Polański.

Władyslaw Szpilman died on 6 July, 2000, at the age of 88, and is buried at Warsaw’s Powązki Cemetery

Szpilman studied piano in Warsaw and Berlin, and worked at Polish Radio for four years until the outbreak of World War Two. He miraculously avoided capture by the Nazis, in the final months of the war finding shelter in the ruins of Warsaw and surviving thanks to the help from his friends and a German Army officer, Wilm Hosenfelt.

After the war, Szpilman resumed his professional contacts with Polish Radio, serving as director of its music department for 18 years. He then founded the Warsaw Piano Quintet, which toured around the world for more than two decades. His compositional output includes several symphonic works and some 500 popular songs, many of which have remained popular till today.

Szpilman published his war-time memoirs soon after the war ended under the title Death of a City, but the book was soon banned by the Stalinist authorities. It was re-published by Szpilman’s son, Andrzej, in 1998, in German and English, and has since been translated into over thirty languages. (mk)