page_title: Conversations with an Executioner
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Conversations with an Executioner / Background
caption_attribution_description: Original or archival image caption, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme.German&#58; Der Führer der GroßaktionThe leader of the grand operationtitle QS:P1476,de:"Der Führer der Großaktion" label QS:Lde,"Der Führer der Großaktion" label QS:Lfr,"Le chef de la grande opération" label QS:Lpl,"Dowódca wielkiej operacji" label QS:Lru,"Лидер великой операции" label QS:Len,"The leader of the grand operation" label QS:Leo,"La komandanto de la granda operaco" label QS:Lcs,"Velitel velké operace" Deutsch: Niederschlagung des Aufstandes im Warschauer Ghetto. Foto von Jürgen Stroop in einem Bericht an Heinrich Himmler vom Mai 1943. English: Stroop Report: a report written by Jürgen Stroop for Heinrich Himmler about liquidation of Warsaw Ghetto in May 1943. Polski: Raport Stroopa: raport z maja 1943, napisany przez Jürgena Stroopa do Heinricha Himmlera na temat likwidacji getta warszawskiego. עברית: דו"ח סטרופ, נכתב על ידי יורגן סטרופ להיינריך הימלר על דיכוי המרד בגטו ורשה במאי 1943
context_page_description: Conversations with an Executioner is a book by Kazimierz Moczarski, a Polish writer and journalist, officer of the Polish Home Army who was active in the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II. On 11 August 1945, he was captured and imprisoned in a maximum-security prison by the notorious UB secret police under Stalinism. For a time, he shared the same cell with the Nazi war criminal Jürgen Stroop, who was soon to be executed. They engaged in a series of conversations. The book is a retelling of those interviews.
  Moczarski spent four years on death row, incarcerated as an alleged enemy of the state. He was tried three times while in prison as an anticommunist, and pardoned eleven years later, during the anti-Stalinist Polish October. His manuscript about Stroop, written in secrecy from 1956, was published in monthly installments by the magazine Odra in 1972–74, followed by a shortened book version released in 1977. The full text without communist censorship was published in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, by the Polish Scientific Publishers PWN. Moczarski did not witness the publication of his book.
context_section_description: SS-Gruppenführer Jürgen Stroop was taken prisoner by the Allies in Germany under a false identity. He was tried by the U.S. Military Tribunal at Dachau on unrelated charges. In late May 1947, Stroop was handed over for retrial to the People's Republic of Poland for the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the methodical destruction of the Ghetto. His crimes resulted in the death of over 50,000 people. He was kept in jail for four years before the Criminal District Court in Warsaw put him on trial on July 18, 1951 for the war crimes committed in Poland. Stroop was executed on 6 March 1952, arrogant and unrepentant until the very end.
  Moczarski spent nine months (or 255 days) with Stroop, locked in his cell from March 2, 1949 until November 11, 1949. The Stalinists falsely accused Moczarski of being a Nazi, which in turn allowed Stroop to relax in his presence, his every word a form of confession with nothing held back. Moczarski himself was sentenced to death on November 18, 1952. The following October, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but he was not informed about the change. In December 1956, at the end of Stalinist terror in Poland, he was retried for the last time, pronounced innocent, and rehabilitated. The courts declared that the charges against him were utterly falsified by the Ministry under Roman Romkowski who ordered his brutal treatment. Some 15 years after his torturous ordeal had ended, Moczarski began writing his book in 1971 using notes collected since 1956, and published parts of it soon thereafter. Some of his Polish followers asked how he could remember it so well. It was due to his heightened state of alertness that only death row could bring, he said. In the Annex to his book Moczarski explained that also Stroop, seemingly unable to remember any Polish word learned a day earlier, was happy to recite every single line from his reports to Hitler.
caption: Jürgen Stroop (center, in a field cap) with his men observe the burning of Warsaw Ghetto during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, 1943
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