When discussing the horrors of the Holocaust there is a fundamental question that should be asked of everyone
What would you do?
If you were faced with life in the Warsaw Ghetto - Would you have risen up against your captors? Would you have joined the Jewish Police and bought yourself extra time? Would you have lived in hope that you would survive by obeying every command of the Gestapo?
If you were a German officer or an 'Aryan' living outside the Ghetto - would you have hidden a Jewish man? Would you have let someone escape? Would you have risen up against National Socialism? Knowing that to do so you risked not only your life but the lives of your whole family.
This question then defines how you discuss a book written by Wladyslaw Szpilman, a pianist and minor Polish celebrity of the time, who survived not only the Jewish Ghetto but the death of Warsaw between 1939-1945. It is a tale of survival written in 1945 when the memory was fresh and painful, written in an unemotional just.the.facts way of a person who has been through unmentionable horror.
Szpilman's war started as he was playing Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor at Polish Radio with shelling all around, it was the last live music played on Polish Radio until after the war when the first live music played was again Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor, and again played by Szpilman. The tale of his survival is contained between these two playings. His status as a well known pianist raised another question in the book:
What is the role of an artist in times of profound crisis?
The relatively unemotional writing in this book has been off-putting to some. For other readers this detached style of writing only serves to intensify the experiences of the author and allows the reader to fill in the emotional gaps (to the extent that they want to or can stomach).
The actions of the German officer - Willem Hosenfeld - are critical to the book as it comes to its conclusion. His actions save Szpilman's life and it was documented that his was not the only Jewish life saved by this man. His role in the story again raises the question - what would you do in the same situation? Particularly as his actions contributed to his eventual death at the hands of the Russians as a POW some years later.
Our bookgroup has now read three books that deal with the Holocaust, all from different angles. Suite Francaise looks at the life of Jews in Occupied France, The Book Thief examines the fate of the Jewish people from the point of view of a young German girl and The Pianist gives full detail of the horrors of the fall of Warsaw. Each book shows how each person had a different war and how there are so many ways in which people were forced to grasp for their survival.
This book was first printed in Poland in 1946 but quickly banned from further publication by the Stalinist regime of the time, perhaps because Russians were not painted in a positive light. Only in 2000 was it translated into English and published to popular acclaim - including the production of an award-winning movie of the same name.
We also talked about the affect of unemployment and difficult times on the rise of hate groups. When jobs are scarce we seek to narrow the criteria for getting them. Certainly the US has tracked a recent increase in the activity of hate groups during our current financial crisis.
We discussed whether this would be a good high school text as compared to the Diary of Anne Frank. How much can we ever hope to understand of the plight of the Jewish people during WWII. How much could a high school student really understand? Did those of us who read Diary of Anne Frank as teenagers really understand how precarious their predicament was and the risk taken by those who hid her family?
Seven members attended this meeting. Eight members submitted scores:
7, 7,7, 7.5,7.5, 8, 8.5 and 9 for an average of 7.7
Our April book is Persuasion by Jane Austen.
