Schindler's List deals with the rescue of a number of Polish Jews in Krakow during World War II. The idea of writing a history of his life came to Roman Polanski when in 1981 he was visiting the Polish village of Wysoka. There as a child he had found refuge from the Nazis with the family of an impoverished farmer, during the period between the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto in March 1943 and the parlous liberation of Poland by the Russians at the end of World War II.
Most Polish patriots see a parallel between the episodes of their own lives and the tragic phases of their country's history, and Mr. Polanski says he was further encouraged to tell his story, the story of a Polish traveler in a large and dangerous world, by the imposition of martial law in Poland late in 1981.