The true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman who, in the 1930s, was known as the most accomplished piano player in all of Poland, if not Europe. Roman Polanski, in his turn, escaped from the Krakow ghetto before its liquidation and wandered about gaining refuge with a number of Catholic families. His mother died in Nazi concentration camp when Roman was eight.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, however, Szpilman becomes subject to the anti-Jewish laws imposed by the conquering Germans. By the start of the 1940s, Szpilman has seen his world go from piano concert halls to the Jewish Ghetto of Warshaw and then must suffer the tragedy of his family deported to a death camp, while Szpilman is conscripted into a forced German Labor Compound. At last deciding to escape, Szpilman goes into hiding as a Jewish refugee where he is witness to the Warshaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warshaw City Revolt in 1945. When he escapes the ghetto, at first he is hidden in an appartment by Polish friends in the Resistance, after lives in the ruins of Warsaw.
Real hero of the movie Wladyslaw Szpilman died at 88 in 2000.