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

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. Kazimierz Moczarski was born in Warsaw in 1907, and studied law at Warsaw University and the Sorbonne. During the Nazi German 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 death and imprisoned for eleven years. It was during this time that he was locked up with the Nazi war criminal, Jürgen Stroop. 'A Polish classic which evokes the past but also sheds light on the predicaments of the present.' - Anne Applebaum, author of Autocracy, Inc. 'A masterpiece of 20th-century literature.' - The Telegraph. 'This is a fascinating and totally unexpected account of one of the darkest periods of the Second World War.' - Antony Beevor.