Conversations with an Executioner

A remarkable firsthand account of the rise and fall of the Nazis told from the inside of a prison cell.

The first complete English translation of the international classic work of World War II literature and investigative journalism.

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 firsthand account of these extraordinary exchanges, giving disturbing insight into the mind of one of history’s most brutal war criminals.

Through his conversations with Stroop, Moczarski details the opportunities that the rise of the Nazi party in Germany presented for marginalized, mediocre characters like Stroop to gain prestige and power under the new regime—and the consequences that came for them after its fall. Unflinchingly examining some of humanity’s darkest moments, his work is a towering literary achievement, steeped in keen journalistic enterprise and psychological insight.

Widely translated and adapted for stage and screen in over 15 languages, this lost classic of World War II literature is now available in its first ever complete English translation.