The Pianist

April 6, 2009

Dear Friend,

I would like to share with you what I am learning about the Holocaust because I think it was a major historical event that everyone should be informed about.   The Holocaust was the genocide of six million European Jews during World War II.   It was a deliberate extermination planned and executed by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler.   It is important to understand the Holocaust because it will help us to make sense of similar tragic events that go on today.   For example, there is ongoing armed conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan.   At least 400,000 people are dead, and as many as 2.5 million displaced from their homes.   The more you talk about what is going on, the more people will learn.   Therefore, I will pass on my knowledge of the Holocaust to you by discussing a movie that a recently saw called “The Pianist.”

Directed by Roman Polanski, “The Pianist” made a significant contribution to Holocaust studies.   It is a unique story about German Nazis and Polish Jews because it tells the story of the Warsaw Ghetto and one if its inhabitants named Wladyslaw Szpilman, a pianist.   The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by the Germans during the war.   Thousands of Polish Jews were brought to the Ghetto which was filled with disease, starvation, and poverty.   “The Pianist” shows a scene of people fighting over a can of soup and eating the spilled soup of the pavement.   It also shows how the Jews in Warsaw were humiliated by the German officers who made them dance in the street.   The officers even show a disabled man being thrown out of his wheelchair from the top of a building.   People are being killed for no reason.   Even though the movie sounds like it is very hard to watch, Szpilman’s story is important and deserves to be told and heard.

The Jews in “The Pianist” started a resistance movement which was eventually defeated by the Germans.   Still, the Jews fought back and made a good effort.   By...