Razgovori sa dželatom

"Conversations with an Executioner" (Rozmowy z katem) is one of the most harrowing and significant testimonies regarding the nature of Nazi crimes and the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. The author, Kazimierz Moczarski—an officer in the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and a resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation—was arrested after the war by the Polish communist secret police on trumped-up charges. As part of a campaign of psychological torture, Stalin’s regime placed him in the same prison cell in 1949 with a high-ranking Nazi commander: SS-Gruppenführer Jürgen Stroop, the man responsible for the brutal suppression of the uprising and the total destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. Moczarski and Stroop spent 255 days together in a cramped space, both awaiting the death penalty. The author uses this unique and absurd situation to construct a profound psychological and sociological profile of his cellmate through their daily conversations. Through Stroop’s meticulous and dispassionate recollections, the mechanisms that create a Nazi criminal are laid bare: from his upbringing and blind loyalty to Hitler, through ideological brainwashing, to a complete lack of remorse for mass murder. The book is an extraordinary study of the "banality of evil" and an invaluable historical document.