Unknown · Public domain

Szpilman was a popular pianist on Polish Radio when the German occupation confined him to the Warsaw Ghetto; he spent two years afterward hiding in the ruins of the destroyed city, kept alive in its final months by a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who defied Nazi policy to help him. He returned to Polish Radio after the war and kept composing, writing hundreds of songs and orchestral works over the following decades. His memoir of survival became the basis for Roman Polanski's film The Pianist.