This film directed by Roman Polanski, is based on the biographical novel by the Polish-Jewish composer Wladyslaw Szpilman, an Holocaust survivor.  The movie is definitively worth seeing as it won several international awards, including three Oscars (best Director, best Screenplay and best actor for Adrien Brody).  The film starts in September 1939, when the Nazis invade Poland, and force Jews from working, making them wear arm bands with the Start of David.  In November 1940, Szpilman and his family were moved to the Warsaw Ghetto were people were starving.  In November 1942, while Szpilman and his family were being transported to the Treblinka extermination camp, Szpilman was separated by a police officer that recognized him and helped him remain in the Ghetto, where Szpilman helped the resistance smuggle weapons.  Szpilman finally fled the Ghetto and with the help from friends hid in different locations until 1944 when a German tank hit the apartment where he was hiding so he was forced to flee.  Warsaw was in ruins, and Szpilman was looking for food when he was found by the German officer Hosenfeld.  When the officer found out that Szpilman was a pianist, he let him play Chopin’s ballade in G-minor. The officer appreciated music and art, so he let Szpilman hid in the attic of a house while providing food so that he could survive in hiding. In January 1945, the Germans were defeated and Szpilman was free again, while the German officer Hosenfeld was taken prisoner by the soviets, until he died in 1952.  After the war, Szpilman continued his career as a pianist in Poland and performed multiple times, until he died at age 88.  Remarkably, Polanski had a similar experience as his mother died at the Krakow Ghetto, while Polanski escaped hiding in a farm barn until the end of the war when he was reunited with his father.  The Pianist is a very powerful film enriched with the biographical stories of its film Director Polanski and the main character Szpilman.  It is without a doubt an important testament to the inhumanity of war, segregation, and the unthinkable cruelty of the Holocaust where 6 million Jews were exterminated or died of starvation or disease.   This film should help us understand why this dark time in history cannot happen again.