The Pianist

Władysław Szpilman was just a pianist. That’s all he was. He didn’t know a war was coming. He didn’t know his family would be taken away, that he would be left behind, wandering through the ruins of his city. He didn’t know that one day, he’d be too weak to lift a spoon to his mouth, let alone his fingers to a piano key.He just survived because somehow, fate let him. He watched as everything was destroyed, as everyone he loved disappeared. He hid when he was told to hide. He ran when he was told to run. And when he was finally alone, starving, trembling, stripped of everything, he still wasn’t anything more than what he had always been. A pianist.And when he touched a piano again, after so much silence, it was both a miracle and a tragedy. Because the war was over, but the music would never sound the same. He survived, but surviving is not the same as living.