After 7 years, I finally watched Polanski’s The Pianist, the story of a Polish Jew, Władysław Szpilman, who was an expert on Chopin. I hadn’t watched the movie, in part, because I was repelled by Polanski’s criminal history.
It is a riveting story of beauty, hatred, misery, and the indefatigable triumph of the soul. (Also, I did not realize that Polanski had such a tortured past.)
It is at the very end of the film that we are introduced to a German Nazi, Wilhelm Hosenfeld, who is portrayed as a kind man, who doesn’t betray the Polish Jew, in hiding after many horrific years living witnessing the Ghetto uprising and later the Warsaw uprising.
I just found out that, recently, Israel made Wilhelm Hosenfeld a “Righteous among the Nations”.
For more information on this “man of courage” go here.
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Major thanks for the article. Will read on…
In reply to The Polish Scot:
I did not refer to Wilhelm Hosenfeld as a Nazi Officer, but rather as a German Nazi. He was, after all, a member of the Nazi Party.
As to Roman Polanski, he was not found “guilty in absentia”. As a defendant, he pled guilty of unlawful sexual contact with a minor. You can read the whole guilty plea transcript here: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0928091polanskiplea1.html.
Contrary to your assertions, Wilm Hosenfeld was not a NAZI officer.
He was a regular Wehrmacht Hauptman. Albeit an intelligence officer.
Furthermore, he was a splendid human being who, against all the diktats of the nazi regime he had to serve as a soldier, he could and did identify right from wrong. Accordingly he helped those in need, wherever and whenever he could. All at tremedous personal risk.
His thaks for the courage he displayed, was that he died in a Communist Soviet camp abandoned by many. Those are the cold hard facts of the matter.
As for Roman Polanski, I believe that I’m correct in stating that he has merely been found “guilty in-absentia” by a court in your USA. Furthermore, that verdict was reached on the unsubstantantiated evidence from a 13 year old girl. Why not ask yourself some questions.
For example – What was the motive for her testimony? Who was priming her to present the evidence? What was the reasoning behind the whole acceptance of that so called evidence?? I suspect money; a pay-off, black-mail call it what you will. Woukld she have raised the charge if Polanski had been forthcoming with money, opportunity, or whatever this child was after. Finally on this point, what sort of parent permits their 13 year old daughter to even be in the same town and unescorted with a renown roue???
Think a little before you condemn so swiftly. Search for the truth, question what your system offers you and ask, why its being offered.
That’s a healthy democratic attitude we have developed over hundreds of years in our little country. The United Kingdom.
Regards
A Polish Scot