WO ... THE GUY IS A WAR HERO.
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link to en.wikipedia.org]
Polanski witnessed both the ghettoization of Kraków's Jews into a compact area of the city, and the subsequent deportation of all the ghetto's Jews to concentration camps, including watching as his father was taken away. He remembers from age six, one of his first experiences of the terrors to follow:
His father was transferred, along with thousands of other Jews, to Mauthausen, a group of forty-nine German concentration camps in Austria. His mother was taken to Auschwitz and was killed soon after arriving. The mass forced exodus took place immediately after the German liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, after its failed rebellion, a true-life backdrop to Polanski's film, The Pianist (2002).
Polanski, who was then in hiding from the Germans, remembered seeing his father being marched off with a long line of people. Polanski tried getting closer to his father to ask him what was happening, and managed to get within a few yards away. His father saw him, but afraid his son might be spotted by the German soldiers, whispered (in Polish,) "Get lost!"
Polański escaped the Kraków Ghetto in 1943 and survived by assuming the name Romek Wilk, with the help of some Polish Roman Catholic families who promised his father they would shelter him if necessary. Initially, that prearranged care-taking of young Polanski lasted only a few days, as the family complained that they "hadn't intended to give refuge to a 'little Jew'." The family evicted him, although they refused to return his suitcase of personal belongings.
Again in hiding without his parents, he succeeded in being sheltered by other Catholic families, where he attended church, learned to recite most Catholic prayers by heart, and behaved outwardly as a Roman Catholic, although he was never baptized. However, his efforts to assimilate into Catholic households as a member of the family often failed. In one instance, the parish priest visited the family and began to interrogate him, as Polanski recalls.
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