5 real historical locations · Poland
Roman Polanski's autobiographical film based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist who survived the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto by hiding in bombed ruins — sustained by music and the unexpected help of a German officer who found him at an abandoned piano. Adrien Brody won the Oscar.
CinemaMapped has mapped 5 real historical locations where the story takes place, spanning Poland.
Polish-Jewish pianist Władysław Szpilman survives the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and years in hiding.
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest in Nazi-occupied Europe, imprisoning 400,000 Jews. The 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising lasted 28 days — the largest single revolt by Jews during WWII. The Germans razed the entire ghetto ...
View location →The destroyed streets of Warsaw — Szpilman hides in bombed-out buildings as the city is systematically demolished.
After the 1944 Warsaw Uprising was crushed, Hitler ordered the complete destruction of Warsaw. German engineers demolished 85% of the city building by building. It was deliberate urbicide — the calculated erasure of a...
View location →The Szpilman family is taken to the Umschlagplatz -- the deportation assembly point adjacent to Warsaw freight station -- where hundreds of thousands of Ghet...
The Umschlagplatz on Stawki Street was the collection point from which approximately 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Grossaktion in summer 1942. A memor...
View location →Szpilman's first hiding place on the Aryan side of Warsaw -- a safe apartment arranged by former colleagues, where he watches the Ghetto Uprising from his wi...
After being pulled from the deportation line, Szpilman was smuggled to the Aryan side of Warsaw, where Polish friends moved him between safe houses. He was in the Nowogrodzka area when the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began...
View location →A ruined villa in Zoliborz where Szpilman hides alone through the winter of 1944-45 -- and where German Captain Hosenfeld discovers him and asks him to play ...
After the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, most of the city was systematically destroyed by German engineers on Hitler orders. Szpilman spent months hiding in the rubble of Zoliborz until the Soviet advance in January 1945.
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