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THE FAMILY OF the late Jewish-Polish protagonist of Oscar-winning Holocaust film The Pianist said today they had won an appeal against defamation over claims in a book that he was a Nazi collaborator.
Wladyslaw Szpilman’s widow and son brought the case in Warsaw’s appeals court after losing the initial complaint in September 2013.
The family took issue with certain quotes by Polish-Jewish singer Wiera Gran in a 2010 biography of her life, written by Agata Tuszynska.
The remarks see Gran accuse Szpilman of being part of the Jewish Police in the Warsaw ghetto.
The popular late ghetto songstress was herself suspected of collaborating with the Nazis. A court acquitted her of the charges after the war but continued criticism forced her to leave Poland.
In the original court case, ghetto survivors who knew Szpilman testified and rejected Gran’s claims, as did former foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who helped Jews during World War II.
Judge Bozena Lasota said the author herself had expressed doubts over the allegations against Szpilman and “never shared Wiera Gran’s most serious view”.
Freedom of speech
But Lasota said a biographer has the right to quote opinions based on freedom of speech and added it would be impossible to pen a biography of the recently deceased without upsetting anyone.
The appeals court however found in favour of Szpilman, who died in 2000.
“This ruling will allow the ethical standards in Poland to improve and bring into question the poorly-interpreted notion of freedom of speech,” said Andrzej Szpilman, the son, after the 2013 ruling was thrown out.
But Tuszynska was aghast.
“Once again they have closed Wiera Gran’s mouth. I am really sorry,” the Gazeta Wyborcza daily quoted the writer as saying.
Following the appeal court’s decision on Friday, Tuszynska and her publishers have 15 days to make a public apology to the Szpilman family and remove incriminating passages from any future editions of the work.
Szpilman inspired Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning film about a piano player who uses his music to survive under Nazi rule.
Polanski’s poignant 2002 movie about Szpilman won three Oscars, including one for actor Adrian Brody, who played him.
After leaving Poland, Gran emigrated to Israel then moved to France, where she died in 2007.
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The Greens will be struggling to survive after the madness they have put us through since they got into power.
@Red Line: Can’t you not focus on the subject being discussed instead of taking potshots?
Take your frustration out in the polling booths instead of ruining the comments thread. The destruction of nature threatens our very existence.
@Ollie O’Cleirigh: The Greens are fake environmentalists. For example they approve of mass immigration, no matter of the impact on Ireland’s carbon footprint.
@Ollie O’Cleirigh: public discourse is far more important than voting even though both are important. The greens have set back the green agenda in Ireland for decades with lazy and incompetent political leaders and party members. They constantly commentate on our emissions and come up with no strategy as to how to mitigate them. Not one word from them on nuclear power and investment in our grid which cannot even connect new wind farms as its totally ineffective and at its capacity already. Then when asked about public they talk about hydrogen trains when electric trains would transform the islands public transport. Bicycle lanes painted on the side of roads and south facing window boxes. They are done. Get them out. Impoverishing the poor further particularly rurally will not help.
@Allora: 100%. There a bunch of amateur politicians that got lucky in the last election.
Malcom why is your so called Green party destroying wildlife habitats ,biodiversity killing trees wasting millions of taxpayers money at Lough Funshinagh flood crisis causing the demolition and flooding of homes farmyards and villages in a National housing crisis !! By not allowing the lake return to its natural level!!! Is there a hidden agenda ?
Well said Malcolm. Green policies are becoming accepted in most governments and we need a brave voice.
Just how committed is the government to preserving what’s left of our biodiversity? It allows coursing clubs to capture thousands of our native hares, supposedly a protected species, for the purpose of setting dogs on them. If that can happen to an iconic species that conservationists have dubbed the “Flagship of Irish biodiversity”, then how serious can our leaders be about saving our wildlife heritage? The image of a hare having its bones crushed or being tossed into the air by a coursing dog could aptly represent the attitude of this government to the wild creatures that share the island with us.
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