SOURCE: Huggler, Justin. “The Story of My Life.” Independent (10 May 2001): 1.

In the following essay, Huggler discusses the production of The Pianist and comments on the parallels between the experiences of Polanski and Wladyslaw Szpilman in Nazi-occupied Poland.

An old man is thrown to his death from a fifth-floor balcony, because he is too crippled to stand up respectfully when soldiers burst in and interrupt his family meal. A young man, held back by police, watches as his family are loaded into the train that will take them to the gas chambers. The bodies of children lie in the streets.

These are all real events that took place in the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland—but they are also scenes from The Pianist, a new film currently being shot in Warsaw by Roman Polanski. The Pianist is a major event in all sorts of ways. It...