In 1940, the Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman was imprisoned by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto along with thousands and thousands of other Jews. For the Jewish inhabitants, there is no prospect of escaping deportation to the inhumane concentration camps. Already on the way to the wagons and thus doomed to death, a Jewish policeman helps Wladyslaw to escape. For him, a time of loneliness, of hiding, of escape now dawns - until shortly before the end of the war he is discovered by the German officer Wilm Hosenfeld in the ruins of a house in the bombed city.