Pianist the Streets of Our

Pianist

The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the Republic is in danger. Yes - danger from within and without. We need law and order! Without it our nation cannot survive.

Adolph Hitler, 1932 (Delwiche, 2011).

Nazi Germany

Adolf Hitler took power in Germany in 1933 and used his position to launch a campaign against Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. Hitler blamed the Jews for all the misfortunes that had befallen Germany including the loss of World War I, and the hyper inflation of 1923. His claims were aided by the Great Depression, a time when people were looking for a scapegoat to blame their troubles. This campaign reached a peak in 1938 with Krystalnacht, the night of broken glass. In November 1938, a Nazi diplomat was shot dead by a Jew in Paris. Hitler ordered a seven day campaign of terror against the Jews in Germany. On November 10th ten thousand shops owned by Jews were destroyed and their contents stolen. Homes and synagogues were set on fire and left to burn (Trueman, 2000).

World War II allowed Hitler even more freedom to bring death and destruction to Jewish communities throughout Europe. Historians disagree over whether the Germans supported these Nazi actions or whether fear made them turn a blind eye. In the immediate aftermath of Krystalnacht, an anonymous German wrote to the British Consul in Cologne stating that the German people had nothing to do with the riots and burnings. Christopher Isherwood, a British writer living in Germany, witnessed the arrest of a Jew in a cafe and noted everybody simply looked away. On the other hand, to create a scene would have provoked a violent response from those doing the arresting. The fear of the concentration camps was such that most felt compelled to remain silent even if they did not approve of what was going on.

Control

Hitler controlled the people by creating a state of fear. This is demonstrated throughout the film the Pianist (2002) directed by Roman Polanski. The movie is the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish musician in Warsaw and the suffering imposed on the Jewish people of that nation by the Germans. The movie depicts terrible violence wrecked against a segment of society whose only crime was to be Jewish. In one scene a man is dragged out of his wheel chair and thrown off a balcony into the street below. In another a woman is shot in the head for asking a question of a Nazi officer. And in another scene men are randomly pulled from a line and told to lie face down on the street and then shot in the head.

This irrational hatred of Jews becomes the accepted norm. There is a scene in the film where Szpilman is hiding in an apartment and accidentally pulls some plates down off a shelf causing them to shatter. The noise alerts the neighbor woman who demands his identity papers and threatens to call the police. Her hatred for the man is based solely on the fact he is Jewish.

There is a famous experiment done by Jane Elliot (1970), an elementary school teacher, which demonstrates how quickly people will adopt a belief in their own superiority. In the experiment Elliot tells the children that blue eyed people are superior to brown eyed people. She makes the brown eyed children wear a collar so others can more readily recognize them. This is analogous to the Jewish people of Warsaw having to wear a Star of David on their sleeve. A video of the experiment shows how easily a herd mentality spread throughout the class. One group adopted the peer influenced behavior associated with the belief in their superior status, regardless of that statuses' tenuous basis in fact, while the oppressed group adopted behavior that was submissive and reinforced the behavior of the superior group. Elliot's video is a vivid demonstration of the effect of racial and ethnic expectations. In the film we see Jewish men acting as guards, aiding the Germans. It is apparent that they want to identify with the group that, in their mind, has superior status.

The Anti-hero