The New Yorker:

From 2014: During the German occupation of Poland, the organ was nearly lost.

By Alex Ross

Warsaw is a little bleak this time of year, as I discovered on a visit to the Polish capital last week. Expeditions that look straightforward on paper may turn arduous. On my first day, I set out for the Chopin Museum, which appeared to be a twenty-minute walk from my hotel. The temperature was well below freezing, the wind off the Vistula invasive, the sidewalk glazed with ice. After a few blocks, I felt the need to take refuge, and followed several elderly women into Holy Cross Church, on Krakowskie Przedmieście, one of Warsaw’s main thoroughfares. Sitting in a pew, I looked to my left and saw, on one of the church’s pillars, the legend “here rests the heart of frederick chopin.” After a moment of confusion, I remembered a story from the Chopin biographies: in his last days, in Paris, the supreme poet of the piano had asked that his heart be brought back to his native land. So while Chopin’s body rests at Père Lachaise, in the company of Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, his heart resides at Holy Cross, in the first big pillar on the left. I made a note to look up the story when I got home. The definitive chronicle is by the Polish journalist Andrzej Pettyn. There is also “Chopin’s Heart,” a book by the American physician Steven Lagerberg.

Go to link