‘To Write Władysław Szpilman’s Odyssey’: The Music of the Warsaw Ghetto in The Death of a City and The Pianist

Abstract Unbeknownst to most audiences today, the memoirs that form the basis of the film The Pianist (2002) were likely ghostwritten by a non-Jewish music critic, Jerzy Waldorff, who was notorious for his antisemitic and fascist views prior to the war. Drawing on rarely considered archival sources and attending to the original 1946 text of the memoirs, this article contextualizes them within the political climate of early post-war Poland, where they were written and published. Through this ecological reading, it reveals how multiple authorial voices likely shaped one of the most famous portrayals of music during the Holocaust.