High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Pianist is a memoir written by the Polish musician of Jewish origins W?adys?aw Szpilman. He tells how he survived the German deportations of Jews to extermination camps, the 1943 destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising during World War II. Szpilman wrote his memoir in 1945, shortly after the war?s end. He published the book, titled ?mier? miasta ("Death of a City"), soon suppressed by Poland's new communist authorities. Few copies of the book were printed, and it remained sidelined for more than 50 years. Jerzy Andrzejewski and Czes?aw Mi?osz wrote a screenplay Robinson warszawski ("The Robinson of Warsaw") based on the memoir and the movie was produced in 1949 but unreleased because of Stalinist cultural policy. The largest problems for the authorities were the grey areas that Szpilman described (not all Germans were bad and, worst of all, not all of the oppressed were good).