The Pianist: The Pianist: The Pianist’s Endurance and Adversity
The Nazis ordered all Jewish citizens to wear Star of David badges whenever they went out to public to prove their superiority. It was intended to show the Jews’ inferiority to Aryans and help German citizens to identify subordinate Jews. If the Nazis find out, severe consequences could result if you don’t wear the badge on your clothing. Wladyslaw Szpilman and his family are opposed to wearing Star of David. Szpilman and Henryk, Szpilman’s brother dissident, refuse to give in to the Nazis. Wladyslaw is less reckless because he understands the implications of his actions. The Nazis made another attempt to subdue Poland’s Jewish community by locking them up in the Warsaw Ghetto. While the Warsaw Ghetto wasn’t the biggest ghetto in Nazi Germany, it was home to an alarmingly large population. The Germans did not care about the suffering of the Jews in the ghetto and as the film shows, they brutally assaulted some denizens (like Wladyslaw’s young boy who was beaten and then killed by Wladyslaw). The Nazis tried to conquer the Jews by sending them to concentration camp. Anybody questioning the logic would be shot to death. The Jews were kept in very small spaces while waiting for trains, just like the ghettoes. Finally, the Jews were put to work and starved. Later, extermination camps were established. The film does not show the camp conditions, but Szpilman’s family was likely to have suffered these terrible conditions.
Itzhak and other Jews were placed in high places in the ghetto by Nazis because of the large Jewish population in Warsaw. The Nazis could not keep order with the few hundred thousand Jews living within the ghetto. The ghetto needed to be stable and productive. They made it possible for Jews to take over the day-to-day operations of the Ghetto. There are scenes throughout the film that show the Jews not reacting aggressively to Nazi misdeeds. Some Jews were being held up by Nazi officers as they waited to be allowed to enter Warsaw Ghetto. The Jews found it extremely awkward, but they didn’t retaliate as the Nazis would just execute them along with other Jews. Szpilman, who was living in Warsaw Ghetto at the time, would be randomly chosen by the Nazis to execute. The execution line was filled with Jews who knew that resisting would not work. While the Nazis were dangerous and armed, they were actually defenseless. It is likely that the Jews thought resistance would be futile unless it was mass-produced, as they did in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Nazis would exert an apparently inexorable power over Jews, and they would continue to disorient them.
