Was Szpilman a hero or a collaborator?
According to singer Vera Gran,Szpilman who was her piano accompanist,he was close friends with the Gastapo agents and the infamous Jewish Police,and that he"pushed other Jews onto the transport that would take them to the camps."
the question is how come he managed to survive while others perished?
the question is how come he managed to survive while others perished?
in the book THE ACCUSED about Vera Gran by Agata Tuszynska,Gran clains that she left the Jewish Quarter in August 2 1942,by disguising her appearance.though i don't know how that would have been possible.
shareDo NOT believe the rubbish that Agata Tuszynska is saying. She is a liar, and bases her claims on an Alzheimer's-suffering, possible collaborator - and even makes up libel herself! She repeats and embellishes Gran's slanderous statements against W?adys?aw Szpilman, trying to portray him as evil; she runs the book under the slogan 'the other side of the W?adys?aw Szpilman story' - otherwise she would not be able to sell it at all as nobody has heard of Gran. It is lies that she was famous before the war, she only became famous during the war. It is lies that she was more famous than Szpilman. It is lies that Szpilman accused her of collaboration, he did not.
Tuszynska makes up much of the information against Szpilman, even though she claims it is fact in her book. However, there are no archival records of Szpilman's alleged collaboration. If he had been a collaborator, it would have come out when his book was published and widely read in 1946, when many Holocaust survivors were alive, or in 1998, when his book was re-published, or in 2002, when the movie adaptation of his book, The Pianist, came out. He was never a collaborator. Rather, he was a victim of the Second World War - a statement Tuszynska denies! She says because he was the director of music at Polish Radio, he cannot be a victim. This is the kind of woman we are dealing with.
Many prominent people in Poland say that Szpilman could not have been a collaborator. The German courts have ordered that the lies and libel in the book be blackened. Szpilman's widow and youngest son are fighting the book in Poland, and soon in the USA. As I said before, do not believe the lies in Tuszynska's book. Szpilman survived, and that is all that is important. He is a victim, NOT a collaborator. You can find out more here - Stern's review gives substantial detail to the real truth of the story: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/reviews/0307269124/ref=mw_dp_cr
As well as the above: nobody else has ever said slander or spread libel against Szpilman! How can you, or indeed anyone, base their opinions of a heroic man, a survivor of the Holocaust, on the lies said by one woman? And even the fact that some people are repeating these lies says nothing: Poland is still a very anti-Semetic country - and anyway, the book is at the place of 895,227 in the Amazon best sellers list! What an achievement!
Not only are there lies about Szpilman in the book, but also lies against his son and Roman Polanski, who, according to Vera Gran, plotted to persecute her (this is what is written on the wall of Gran's flat - NOT, as Tuszynska states, 'kill'). They would not, and never did such a thing. Of course not.
But even if we look beyond Szpilman, the book is so anti-Semetic - it practically blames the Jews for their suffering, saying that they had to collaborate to survive! What nonsense!
So please, do not believe it. It's rubbish, and I'm sure it will be taken off the shelves soon enough. Until then, know it is lies and libel. Szpilman was a good man.