You don't just sit back and watch something happening; you live through it yourself, moment by agonizing moment

Rating: Null/10 (30 March 2003)

spoilers herein
When signs of trouble start to show, nobody had any idea the devastation when it's all over. Events follow one after another, and each time you think that something terrible has happened, something soon follows that makes what happened before completely insignificant, as you are propelled towards a nihilistic world you didn't believe would exist.
At the beginning, together with your very close family, you argue over how to hide the extra money that you are no longer allowed to keep under the German occupation. Then, humiliating regulations are imposed that Jews must wear identifying arm badges. You fiery brother vows that he will not obey, as you all take comfort that Britain and France are declaring war on Germany. But then, more atrocity follows as Germans start to rough up and insult Jews on the streets. Before long, your family is out of money and how to make a living becomes a serious concern.
You are wondering how much worse things can get when the shock comes: all 360,000 Jews in Warsaw will be moved to a ghetto area. The familiar and still affluent surrounding is, all of a sudden, lost. As you and your family try to comfort yourselves that your new "home" is not too terribly crammed, you discover that they are building a wall around the entire ghetto. You're now all prisoners.
Life in the ghetto becomes a constant struggle against starvation, as you see people around you breaking down - losing theit sanity, crawling on the ground to suck up spilled food - as the Germans get more wicked. Then, one night, the cold, hard reality finally sinks in, when you witness in the apartment across the street soldiers throwing an old man, still in the wheelchair to which he is confined, into a hedious death in the street below. Everybody else in that same apartment is then chased into the street and shot down, running. This the the beginning of the nightmare.
You try to hang on, you and your beloved family. Enduring humiliation, you get your hot tempered brother out of trouble. You try to get your family working permits which you hope will save your all when the cruel day comes. But the iron, cold grip of reality is there, has always been. You're all finally rounded up, with many others, to wait for the death train. In the last minute, a friend saves you, only to see your family all packed onto the train, like a herd to be slaughtered.
Life seems to have lost its meaning but you, all alone, hang on in the work camp. Nothing would happen for a day and then in the next, you see your friends pulled out randomly, ordered to lie face down on the ground, and shot. You wonder why they just lie there doing nothing, waiting for death, and you ask yourself if that's what you would do too if it happens to you. In the depth of your heart and soul, you do understand that some of them have been completely numbed by the atrocity (now you grasp the full meaning of the word) around them, and have lost their will to live.
You have not lost yours. With help from your friends, a German couple fellow-artists, you escape and hide in an apartment. But soon, they are found out, and you know they will be killed. But you don't have time for remorse because you too have been found out. Cold, exhausted, starved, you found help again. More hiding and isolation. You feel completely helpless, like a small child who has to depend on someone to feed you. For safety, you are locked inside the apartment, can't even go out. When your friends do not show up for two weeks, you finally understand that when you are reduced to this state of bare existance, there is only one thing on your mind: survival. You cling onto this one single thought when you are delirious with illness.
The Allies are fighting back and winning but can you survive to victory? When local resistance strikes back, the Germans bring in tanks. You are closests to panic when shells pound on your building. The door is locked from outside and you have no escape. A shell, while half-stunning you, opens an escape route. In a half-stunned, half-delirious state, you hide in a deserted, a quagmire of a hospital, searching for every scrap of food. German fire-throwers soon flush you out. Climbing over the wall in the backyard, you find in front of you, as far as the eyes can see, the city in complete ruins, reeking decay.
The last stage of your ordeal is hiding in an attic of the ruins. You are down to the most primitave state of existance. You don't know why you are stil hanging on, but you are. Then, help comes unexpectedly from a German officer who, while recognising you as a Jew, has his curiosity aroused by your claiming to be a pianist by profession. In the half-ruined house you play, as ordered, a piano that luckily has escaped destruction. You are exhausted to the edge of collapse. Your fingers are freezing and rigid. Sitting in front of the piano, you tentatively touch the keys, like a student. Then, you move along more confidently. As the music feeds you and you feed back into the music, you feel life surging in you and you feel like you are back in the familiar studio in the Warsaw radio station once more. Music and life come together again and maybe that is the reason why you have hung on for so long, against every adversity.
When you are finally rescued, you are wearing a German army coat given to you by the kind officer, and nearly got shot because of that. When you rescuers ask you why, you're answer is the only one that makes any sense: "I'm cold".
You survived, to become a better and wiser person? Maybe. There is something you have definitely learned: what a war is really like.

ANY war.