The Spiritual Triumph of Wladyslaw Szpilman: Resistance in the Face of Tragedy
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Robinson crusoes
German documentation of Polish civilians leaving Warsaw" August 1944, German Federal Archives
Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw were a small number of Jews who after the Warsaw Uprisings and subsequent liquidation, remained hiding in the city ruins.
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"Germans were constantly passing by, alone or in groups, and when they did I stopped moving and pretended to be another corpse. The odour of decay rose from the dead bodies, mingling with the smell of the fires in the air. I tried to crawl as fast as I could, but the width of the road seemed endless and crossing it took for ever." |
The Crusoes lived in desperate circumstances while the ghetto was destroyed. Many were captured and killed while others survived until the withdrawal of German troops.
"On 15 August 1944 by my pocket calendar...I felt so unbearably hungry that I decided I must go and look for food of some kind whatever happened. In vain. I clambered up on the sill of a boarded-up window and began observing the street through a small crack. Flies were swarming over the bodies in the road." |
Wladyslaw Szpilman was the most prominent of the Robinson Crusoes.
“And now I was lonelier, I supposed, than anyone else in the world. Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being. Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going. But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror. I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live.”
-Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45
EXPRESSING THE TRAGEDY
Henryk Beck, ink on paper, Warsaw 1944. -Jewish Historical Institute
"THE INQUIETUDE (Niepokój) The day is like the inquietude of Chopin's music, The birds, scared away from their nests are circling Low above the earth, They are listening, afraid…
Quietness in the nature, warmth is like before a storm. From the West, low, dark clouds flow. Waylaid fear strikes into the heart. Homesickness, homesickness…
I want to walk on soggy roads, Listen to the sound of wind, Hunt the breath of spring time, Feel the deepest feeling, Find quietness in love.
I am walking, unable to find, keep changing and returning. Somewhere far a way, village hamlets are left behind.
Clouds flew to the East, And on the east side, Lonely, leaning, dark trees endure, In the wind, and in the quietness, They are swung by the inquietude."
-Ravensbrück, The inquietude, Poem of a Ravensbruck Lapin, 18 April, 1942