Conversations with an Executioner: 255 Days Imprisoned with the Nazi who Destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto

‘Extraordinary, original, gripping, and painfully relevant to our times’ Philippe Sands, author of 38 Londres Street

'This is a fascinating and totally unexpected account of one of the darkest periods of the Second World War'  Antony Beevor

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Warsaw, 1949: freedom fighter and journalist Kazimierz Moczarski is being held in a maximum security prison, accused of being an enemy of the state by the Polish secret police. A survivor of the Warsaw Uprising, he is horrified to find himself locked up in a cell with the notorious Nazi official responsible for the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the death of over 50,000 people: Jürgen Stroop.

For 255 days Stroop talks to Moczarski of his life, entirely unrepentant of the crimes for which he would soon be executed himself. Conversations with an Executioner is Moczarski’s first-hand account of these extraordinary exchanges, an insight into the mind of one of history’s most brutal war criminals, and one that unflinchingly examines some of humanity’s darkest moments.

Never before published in the United Kingdom, Conversations with an Executioner is a book of enormous historical importance, written in masterful prose by a writer who tragically wouldn’t survive to see his work published.

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PRAISE FOR CONVERSATIONS WITH AN EXECUTIONER

'This is a remarkable document. By turns shocking and chilling but always compelling, Moczarski's prison conversations with a senior, serial and shameless  Nazi killer provide an invaluable insight into the heart of a hideous ideology' Jonathan Dimbleby, author of Endgame 1944

'An extraordinary book, almost impossible to categorise: simultaneously an act of witness and a work of the imagination, a brilliant portrait of a mediocre man’s rise within the Nazi hierarchy, unsparing and yet deeply human' Jane Rogoyska, author of Hotel Exile

'An intriguing document that portrays Stroop as the exemplary perpetrator: a mediocrity promoted above his abilities, but fanatical in his allegiance to Hitler, Himmler and Nazi ideology. Moczarski, working from memory, brings to light the workings of the Nazi mind with penetrating insight' Dan Stone, author of The Holocaust: An Unfinished History

'A remarkable feat of reportage and timely insight into the Nazi mind' Charlie English, author of The CIA Book Club

'Moczarski’s Conversations with an Executioner is quite simply one of the most remarkable books to emerge out of World War Two. Part unlikely memoir and part biography, it gives an insight into the Nazi mind that is as fascinating as it is chilling. Outstanding' Roger Moorhouse, author of Wolfpack: Inside Hitler’s U-Boat War

'A richly textured three-dimensional portrait of a two-dimensional mass murderer who presided over the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, never revealing a hint of a conscience. Although Hannah Arendt did not coin the phrase "the banality of evil" until much later, Jürgen Stroop already embodied it' Andrew Nagorski, author of Saving Freud

'This fascinating revelation of how a good little middle-class boy turns into a Nazi mass-murderer is all the more chilling for the forensic, at times witty, style in which his horrified cellmate and near-victim records it. A page-turner and must-read for understanding the workings of the Holocaust' Adam Zamoyski, author of Poland: A History

'Essential reading for all those interested in the Nazi occupation of Poland, the mass murder of Polish Jews and the larger history of the Second World War' Antony Polonsky, Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University and Chief Historian, Global Education Outreach Project, Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw

Kazimierz Moczarski was born in Warsaw in 1907, and studied law at Warsaw University and the Sorbonne. During the Nazi Germany occupation of Poland, he fought as an officer in the Polish Resistance. In 1945, he was arrested by the new Communist regime as an enemy of the state, and was sentenced to ten years in prison. It was during this time that he was locked up with the Nazi war criminal, Jürgen Stroop. After his release, Moczarski worked as a journalist, and began writing his masterpiece, Conversations with an Executioner. Moczarski died in 1975, weakened by years of torture during his time in prison.