Classical Music in Poland and the Europe of Chopin - From the Reviewer's Notepad

In a history increasingly bleached by time, Warsaw suffered gross physical destruction by the Nazis, murderous repressions without parallel in revenge for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from 19th April - 16th May 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944. 

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest and most infamous of the Nazi ghettos where a total of almost 480,000 Jews[1] died from either disease, malnutrition, execution or simply murdered at Treblinka. In the ghetto it was said that everyone had ‘death in his eyes’ or ‘a skull instead of a face’.[2] The creation of it necessitated the displacement of over two hundred thousand Poles and Jews from their homes and businesses. A popular saying among Germans at the time was ‘The Poles we hate instinctively; the Jews we hate in accordance with orders.’[3] The displaced lost everything. 
The Germans divided the ghetto into three main sections. In the ‘Little Ghetto’ wealthy Jews and the intelligentia lived well. 

The pianist Władisław Szpilman (known…