The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman

Author:Wladyslaw Szpilman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Picador

11 ∼ ‘Marksmen arise!’

I had moved house once more, the latest of I don’t know how many moves since we were living in Śliska Street and the war broke out. This time we were given shared rooms, or rather cells containing only the most essential household equipment and plank beds. Mine was shared with the three members of the Prόżański family and Mrs A, a silent lady who kept herself to herself, although she had to do so in the same room as the rest of us. The very first night there I had a dream that utterly discouraged me. It seemed to be final confirmation of my assumptions about the fate of my family. I dreamed of my brother Henryk, who came up to me, leaned over my bed and said, ‘We are dead now.’

We were woken at six in the morning by much coming and going in the passage outside. There was loud talk and a lot of activity. The privileged labourers working on the conversion of the Warsaw SS commandant’s palace in Aleje Ujazdowskie were off to work. Their ‘privileged’ status meant that they were given nourishing soup with meat in it before they set out; it was satisfying, and the effects would last some hours. We went out soon after them, our bellies almost empty after some watery broth. Its poor nutritional value matched the importance of our work: we were to clean the yard of the Jewish Council building.

Next day they sent me, Prόżański and his half-grown son to the building which housed the Council storerooms and the flats of Council functionaries. It was two in the afternoon when the familiar German whistle and the customary German yell were heard summoning everyone to the yard. Although we had already suffered so much at the hands of the Germans we froze like pillars of salt. Only two days ago we had been allotted the numbers that meant life. Everyone in this building had one, so surely this could not be another selection. In which case, what was it? We hurried down: yes, it really was a selection. Yet again I saw people cast into despair and listened to the SS men shouting and fuming as they tore families apart and sorted us to right and left, cursing and beating us. Once more, our working group was destined to live, with a few exceptions. Among the exceptions was Prόżański’s son, a delightful boy with whom I had made friends. I had already grown very fond of him, even though we had been living in the same room for only two days. I will not describe his parents’ despair. Thousands of other mothers and fathers in the ghetto were equally desperate during those months. There was an even more characteristic aspect to the selection: the families of prominent personalities in the Jewish community bought their freedom from the supposedly incorruptible Gestapo officers on the spot. To make up the correct numbers carpenters, waiters, hairdressers and barbers and other

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