Roman Polanski revisits his experience as a child survivor of the Krakow ghetto in “Don’t Run! Walk Slowly!”, published by Adelphi together with two letters written to him by his father, Ryszard Polanski. The 192-page volume is priced at 19 euros and will be available in Italian bookstores from November 3. It was published in France in 2025.

The book grew out of a lengthy interview Polanski gave in 2006 for the “Mémoires de la Shoah” project. The director agreed to turn the interview into a written account, which he later read and corrected in full. The volume also includes two letters from his father, kept in a drawer for years before being published.

Polanski describes how restrictions against Jews in Krakow were introduced gradually, while deportations progressively emptied the ghetto and reduced its boundaries. He recalls being unable to attend school, hunger and the constant separation of families. His mother was deported first, followed by his grandmother and sister. His father was the only other close family member to return.

At nine, Polanski watched SS officers take his father away. He later escaped the ghetto with a young friend after a Polish forced laborer told them not to run as they crossed toward the barbed-wire fence. Polanski never learned what happened to the young man, whom he credits with saving his life.

Other Polish civilians also helped him, including a family to whom his father managed to entrust him. Polanski survived the war by moving between families, the countryside and the city, while his father survived imprisonment in the Płaszów and Mauthausen concentration camps.

Father and son rarely spoke about what they had experienced after the war, focusing instead on life and the future. Polanski returned to that past much later, when he decided to make “The Pianist,” for which he received an Oscar.

Ryszard Polanski’s letters describe his own passage through the camps with distance and stark irony. He died in 1984. In the book, the director revisits his memories at the age of 92, combining them with his father’s account of persecution and survival.

Sources: ANSA Cultura. ANSA Cultura.