Legacy
Szpilman's son, Andrzej Szpilman, had long called for Yad Vashem to recognize Wilm Hosenfeld as a Righteous Among the Nations, non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews. Along with him, the Szpilman family and thousands of others asked that Hosenfeld be honoured in this way for his acts of kindness throughout the war.
In 2002, The Pianist, a film based on Szpilman's memoirs of the same name, portrayed Wilm Hosenfeld's rescue of Władysław Szpilman. He was played by Thomas Kretschmann.
In October 2007, Wilm Hosenfeld was posthumously honoured by the president of Poland Lech Kaczynski with a Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (Polish: Krzyż Komandorski Orderu Odrodzenia Polski).
On 16 February 2009, Yad Vashem finally announced that Capt. Wilm Hosenfeld would be posthumously recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations. On 19 June 2009, Israeli diplomats presented Hosenfeld's son, Detlev, with the award, in Berlin.
On December 4, 2011, a commemorative plaque in Polish and English was unveiled at 223 Niepodległości Avenue in Warsaw, the place where Hosenfeld discovered Szpilman, in the presence of Hosenfeld's daughter Jorinde.
Read more about this topic: Wilm Hosenfeld
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“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)