My goodness. The level of absurdness, with all the atrocities commited, is heart-breaking. Szpilman's account of situation in Warsaw in 1939-1945 - as well as his own lucky escapes of certain death - would easily be understood as fiction if not for the fact that we know that for reality as multiple other sources confirm the brutality of those years. One of the most impressive memoirs I have read - but not for the light-hearted.