Despite his father, a survivor of the Holocaust, being portrayed as the protagonist in the award-winning film "The Pianist," Christopher Szpilman says the real heroes were the German officer who saved his father and the many Poles who provided him haven.
Speaking to some 450 students at Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka on Tuesday, Szpilman praised the people who helped his father, Wladyslaw, a Polish Jew and concert pianist, survive World War II, and shared his father's memories of the war.
"If there were more people (like the German officer), the war would not have happened," Szpilman said. "And even if it had, it would not have developed in such a way.