November 1944. Warsaw lies in ruins. The Polish population has been evacuated. German forces are preparing to retreat. Only about 20 Jews remain alive in the entire city, hiding among the rubble. One of them is Vadisaf Spielman, a famous pianist starving to death in an abandoned building. He is searching for food when he hears a voice behind him.
What are you doing here? Standing over there is a high-ranking German officer. Spilman expects to be arrested, interrogated, and executed. Instead, the officer says, “Are you really a pisist? Prove it.” What happened next saved Spilman’s life, but the officer who helped him would die in a Soviet prison, never knowing that his act of mercy had been remembered.
Wadisav Spielman was born on December 5, 1911, in Zoviet, Poland. He studied piano at the Shopan Academy of Music in Warsaw and continued his training at the Berlin Academy of Arts from 1931 to 1933. When the regime took power in Germany in 1933, Spielman returned to Warsaw. By 1935, he had already become a renowned pianist and composer.
He joined Polish radio as a staff pianist, performing classical and jazz pieces. He specialized in Shopan. On September 23, 1939, Spilman was performing live on Polish radio, playing Shopan’s Nocturne in C minor, when German bombs struck Warsaw. The broadcast was cut short mid-performance. That was the last time live music was heard on Polish radio until the end of the war.
By November 1940, German authorities had forced Warsaw’s Jews into a closed ghetto. Spilman and his family—his parents, brother, and two sisters—were confined there. He worked playing piano in ghetto cafes to support them. In 1942, the authorities began mass deportations to the Trebinka extermination camp. Spilman’s entire family was deported.
A member of the Jewish police pulled him from the deportation line at the last minute, recognizing him as a talented musician. His parents, brother, and sisters were murdered at Trebinka. Spilman remained in the ghetto as a laborer. In February 1943, with the help of Polish friends, he escaped from the ghetto and went into hiding on the Polish side of the city.
For more than a year, Polish friends sheltered Spilman despite the risks. Helping Jews was punishable by death, not only for the person helping them but for their entire family. In August 1944, the Polish Home Army launched an uprising against the German occupation. The Warsaw Uprising lasted 63 days. German forces brutally suppressed it.
Between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died. After the defeat of the uprising in October, the German authorities evacuated the entire remaining Polish population of Warsaw and began systematically destroying the city. Buildings were burned and demolished. Warsaw was to be erased. Spilman’s Polish protectors were evacuated along with the rest of the population.
He was left completely alone in the ruins. Without food or water. Winter was approaching. He went from building to building, hiding in attics and basements, avoiding German patrols. He was starving, jaundiced, and could barely move. By mid-November, Spilman was hiding in an abandoned building at Allean Nepod Lagosi 223. He had been there since August.
The building had served as a German military headquarters before being abandoned. He was looking for food in the kitchen when he heard a voice behind him. “What are you doing here? Don’t you know that Warsaw Commando personnel occupy this house?” Spilman turned around. A high-ranking German officer stood there, arms crossed. Captain Wilm Hosenfeld.
Wilhelm Adelbert Hosenfeld was born on May 2, 1895, in Möckenzel, Hesse, Germany, into a devout Catholic family. He served in World War I and received the Iron Cross Second Class. After the war, he became a schoolteacher. In 1920, he married Anmarie Kromacher. They had five children. Hosenfeld was active in Catholic youth movements and taught at a local school in Hunfeld.
In 1935, Hosenfeld joined the National Socialist Party. Like many Germans, he believed it would restore Germany’s strength and prosperity. But by the outbreak of war, he had become disillusioned. In August 1939, Hosenfeld was drafted into the Vermacht. He was 44 years old. He was stationed in Poland from September 1939 until January 1945.
His first assignment was to manage a prisoner-of-war camp for Polish soldiers. Even then, he demonstrated humanity. He allowed visits from the prisoners’ families despite orders forbidding it. He freed several prisoners and befriended Polish families. From July 1940, Hosenfeld was stationed in Warsaw. His official role was that of sports and cultural officer, organizing sporting and educational activities for German soldiers.
It wasn’t a combat position, but what Hosenfeld witnessed in Warsaw changed him completely. He saw the Warsaw Ghetto, more than 400,000 Jews crammed into a small district, starving and dying in the streets. He saw the deportations. He saw the brutality. In his personal diary, Hosenfeld wrote: “With the horrific mass murder of Jews, we have lost this war.”
We have brought upon ourselves an indelible shame, an insurmountable curse. He began actively helping the victims. He hired Leyon Warm, a Jew who had escaped from a train to Trebinka, and provided him with false papers and a job at the stadium. He intervened to free imprisoned Poles. He risked his position and his life repeatedly. During the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944, Hosenfeld was assigned to interrogate captured resistance fighters.
He demanded that they be treated according to the rules of the Geneva Convention, openly defying orders to treat them as criminals. He tried to help members of the Polish resistance, whose courage he admired. By November 1944, Hosenfeld knew that Germany had lost. Soviet forces were approaching Warsaw. The war was ending.
But he had orders to prepare the buildings for use by retreating German units. That’s why he was in the building, wearing a thin neodashi, when he discovered Spilman. When Hosenfeld found him in the kitchen, the pioneer was emaciated, barely able to stand. Hosenfeld asked him what he was doing there. Spilman admitted he was hiding. He was Jewish.
Hosenfeld asked him what his profession was. Spilman replied that he was a pianist. “Prove it,” Hosenfeld said. He accompanied him downstairs to a room with a piano. Then he sat down at the instrument. His hands were numb from the cold and malnutrition. He began to play Schopen’s Nocturne in C minor, the same piece he had been performing on Polish radio when the war broke out. Hosenfeld listened in silence.
When Schilman finished, Hosenfeld made a decision. He would help him. He let Schilman hide in the attic. He brought him bread and jam. He gave him his own German military coat so he would survive the freezing winter. He returned regularly with food. They spoke little. Hosenfeld told Schilman that the war would soon be over. The Soviet army was approaching.
He assured him, “Hold on a little longer.” In mid-December, Hosenfeld arrived for the last time. He brought extra bread and a warm blanket. His unit was evacuating Warsaw. The Soviets could arrive any day. Before leaving, Hosenfeld told Spillman that his name would protect him if he ever needed help after the war.
But ashamed of his association with the German army, Hosenfeld never gave his name. Spillman persisted. “You didn’t ask, but I want you to remember. Spilman. Polish Radio. If anything happens to you and I can help, remember that name.” Hosenfeld left. Warsaw was liberated by Soviet forces on January 17, 1945. Spilman survived.
He returned to Polish radio and resumed his career. In his first postwar broadcast, he performed Shopopen’s Nocturne in C minor, the same piece he had played for Hosenfeld, thus completing what German bombs had interrupted in 1939. He immediately wrote a memoir, published in 1946 as The Death of a City. He described the German officer who had saved him, but could not bring himself to name him.
The memoirs were censored by Soviet authorities. They changed the officer’s nationality from German to Austrian because acknowledging a German humanitarian act contradicted Soviet propaganda. Wilm Hosenfeld was captured by Soviet forces on January 17, 1945, the same day Warsaw was liberated, during a skirmish near Bone, about 30 km from the city.
He was imprisoned and charged with war crimes. He had interrogated prisoners during the Warsaw Uprising and was therefore complicit in the oppression. In 1946, Hosenfeld wrote to his wife from prison. He listed the names of Jews and Poles he had saved, including Leon Warm and Wadisov Spielman. He begged her to find them and asked them to testify on his behalf.
In November 1950, Leon Warm visited Hosenfeld’s wife and told her that he had met him in a Soviet concentration camp. She wrote to Spilman with this information. Spilman and others petitioned the Soviet authorities for Hosenfeld’s release. They provided testimony about his humanitarian actions. The Soviets refused to consider it.
On May 7, 1950, a military tribunal in Minsk sentenced Hosenfeld to 25 years of hard labor. The one-page verdict stated that the trial was conducted without legal representation. Hosenfeld suffered a stroke in 1947 that paralyzed his right side. His health steadily declined. On August 13, 1952, he died of an aortic rupture in a Soviet prison hospital. He was 57 years old.
For decades, Hosenfeld remained virtually unknown. Spilman’s memoirs had been censored and forgotten. In 1998, Spilman’s son, Andre, published a new edition of the memoirs in German and English, titled The Pist. It included excerpts from Hosenfeld’s diary. The book became an international bestseller. In 2002, director Roman Palansky, a Holocaust survivor who had escaped the squalor of the ghetto, adapted the book into a film.
The pianist won the Palm Door Award at KHN and three Academy Awards. Actor Thomas Cretchman portrayed Hosenfeld. The film brought worldwide attention to Hosenfeld’s story. In 1998, Spilman petitioned Yadvashm to recognize Hosenfeld as Righteous Among the Nations, a title for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
The request was initially rejected. Yadvashm needed to verify that Hosenfeld had not been involved in war crimes during his interrogations. New evidence emerged: Hosenfeld’s complete diaries and letters demonstrated his staunch opposition to atrocities and his efforts to help victims. On February 16, 2009, Yadvashm posthumously recognized Wilhelm Hosenfeld as Righteous Among the Nations.
On June 19, 2009, his son Detv received the medal in Berlin from Israeli diplomats. On December 4, 2011, a commemorative plaque in Polish and English was unveiled at 223 Nepod Legwashi Avenue in Warsaw, where Hosenfeld met Spilman. Spilman’s widow, Helina, his son Andre, and Hosenfeld’s daughter, Urinda, attended the ceremony.
Wadisv Spielman died on July 6, 2000, at the age of 88. He never stopped honoring the German officer who saved him. Vilm Hosenfeld’s story isn’t about rebellion. It’s about quiet choices in a world gone mad. He wore the same uniform as the men who destroyed cities. Yet he chose to save lives instead of taking them. Captured by the Soviets, Hosenfeld died in prison, never knowing he had made a difference.
But Spilman never forgot him. He spent years trying to find and free him, and later dedicated his memoirs to the German officer who saved his life. In the ruins of Warsaw, a soldier and a pianist crossed paths, and an act of mercy became a story the world would never forget.
