Customer Reviews

Conversations with an Executioner

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The author, Kazimierz Moczarski, was a member of the Polish Home Army, the Polish resistance to the German occupation during World War II. After the war, the Communist authorities imprisoned Moczarski because he was not a Communist. Ironically, he was held in a cell with Jurgen Stroop, the SS general who commanded the German forces that destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto, and with another German, a member of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst - Security Service). At one time, Moczarski had been ordered to assassinate Stroop, who was also a police official in Warsaw.
During several months, Moczarski had daily conversations with Stroop about his life and especially his role in the destruction of the Ghetto. After his release, Moczarski conducted further research about Stroop. What emerged is this book, partly biography and partly Stroop's account of his career.
The picture of Stroop is that of a shallow man with few convictions, whose SS superiors considered undistinguished, "but a good man!", presumably because he would be willing to do what ordered.
Trained in SS Leadership courses, Stroop could recite long lists of long-gone Germanic tribes of the Roman era. Knowing racial types, he plucked the hair on his head to give himself a higher, "more Aryan" forehead, and the hair on his chest, to remove any "ape-like hairiness." He changed his name from the original Josef, which was too Jewish, to Juergen, which "suited his Weltanschaung". Aware to some degree that he himself did not fit the Nazi mold, he nonetheless willingly murdered others who did not fit the same mold.
In his conversations with Moczarski, Stroop admitted that material things were his primary interest - opportunistic advancement, how much he earned, and how many uniforms and pairs of boots he had. Even after his arrest by the Allies, Stroop was puffed up by the fact that he was given a red Eisenhower jacket, until he learned that it was used to mark him as being sentenced to death by the Americans, who used his actions as police general of Wiesbaden in the killing of Allied fliers to try him in the so-called "chain of command" case. He was then sent to Warsaw, where the Poles tried him for his role in the Warsaw Ghetto - using a picture album and copy of a report that he had kept with him till his arrest. Stroop was hanged on the terrain of the former Warsaw Ghetto.
Moczarski has created a portrait of a totally bland evil-doer who in another time may have lived out his live as an uninteresting policeman in Detmold, his home town.
This is must reading for historians of the criminal types that came to the fore in the Third Reich.

Kazimierz Moczarski's book is a compelling portrait of the totalitarian personality, the "banality of evil": the SS killer Stroop is above all a person bereft of real personality or character - actually, although speaking about toughness and hardness all the time, a spineless, repulsing, soulless coward at heart. It is also a portrait of twentieth century totalitarianism and its cynicism, because Moczarski actually was a resistance fighter himself, but belonging to the "wrong" (non-Communist) resistance, was equated and put in the same cell with this Nazi criminal after the war. This should be compulsory reading both for unreconstructed communists and right-wing holocaust deniers.

The Communist stooges installed by the Soviet "liberators" labeled Polish freedom fighters "fascist", forcing them to share prison cells with German war criminals in order to humiliate them. Former AK (Home Army) member Moczarski turned this travesty around, gaining priceless insights into the ideas and policies of his cellmate, soon-to-hang Juergen Stroop. (For background, see the Peczkis review of The Stroop Report The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw Is No More!).

Stroop had long abandoned Christianity (pp. 33-34) in favor of Wotan-worship (e. g., p. 221)--a common Nazi practice openly condemned by Bishop von Galen (p. 56), famous for his opposition to the euthanasia program. Nazis had many scapegoats besides Jews. (p. 45, 210).

Another reviewer asserted that Moczarski doesn't show how he verified Stroop's statements. In fact, he did. (e. g., p. 11, 16, 104, and Bibliography, e. g., p. 270).

Stroop contended that the Czechs were not a Slavic people, but a Germanic-Celtic one that had become Slavicized. (p. 76). He hoped to eventually settle in the Ukraine, at which time the Ukrainians would experience a falling birth rate owing to having become converted into a nation of alcoholics. Of course, the same applied to Poles--since 1939. (p. 104).

Alluding to his earlier work in the destruction of the Lwow (Lviv) Ghetto, Stroop complained that local Poles, and to a lesser extent, Ukrainians, were interfering with the operation by hiding fugitive Jews on a significant scale. (pp. 111-112). He also paid grudging compliments to the sophistication and effectiveness of the Polish Underground movement (e. g., pp. 115-116, 146, 210), while scorning Polish individualism. (p. 261).

Unlike virtually all modern Holocaust materials, Warsaw-Ghetto-Uprising-suppressor Stroop wasn't in denial about Polish participation in it. In discussing the Grossaktion, he repeatedly mentioned Poles fighting alongside the Jews (pp. 131-133, 151, 169), even disguised as Germans (p. 146, 272), and commented: "Those Jews weren't just resisting, Herr Moczarski, they attacked us. And they weren't fighting alone. They had Polish snipers with them...Incidentally, Herr Moczarski, according to information we got from the Abwehr, the Jews got their `cocktail recipe' from your own Home Army. Our armored forces were terrified of those gasoline-filled bottles. They caused lethal explosions on contact." (p. 119).

Stroop didn't mince words about the scale of Polish aid to the Ghetto Uprising: "And don't think that Hahn hadn't been told which organizations supplied the ZOB in late 1942 and early '43 with over seventy pistols, about a dozen rifles, several sub machine-guns, a light machine gun, ammunition, eight hundred grenades, hundreds of pounds of explosives and sixty-six pounds of the newest British-made `plastic' and the detonators to go with them...several hundred additional detonators for mines, bombs, and grenades, as well as potassium, saltpeter, and other materials used in making explosives...They [Home Army] furnished the insurgents with detailed instructions in the manufacture of weapons and the construction of fortified positions." (p. 161). The Polish-developed system of moving men and materials through sewers was used in both the Jewish (1943) and Polish (1944) Uprisings. Stroop admitted that the Germans couldn't effectively counter it. (p. 131).

The book by Kazimierz Moczarski shows a different (or maybe just one where he is human) view of a Nazi SS officer. Jurgen Stroop a son of a policeman, WW I weteran is trying to get better life than the one his father had. Raised by highly christian mother and police disciplined father the best career path for him is joining the army and fighting for his country. It shows the brutality of the Nazi and SS ways, it also truthfully shows his actions and propaganda which was fed to him and which he strongly believed in. However it also shows him as a father, husband and son. It describes why he did what he did, his feelings and aspirations. This is possibly the first time when a killer from WW II is portraied also as a humand being. It is a great book to get slightly different perspective on the Nazi germany as well as a truthfull unbiast version of history.

I am in agreement with other reviewers that this book is very unique and worth reading.

I could not put it down at times -- even though many parts lack essential details (or background information). Obviously, this is not Moczarski's fault -- since it was the Nazi criminal character, Jurgen Stroop, who was deciding how much he wanted to reveal to Moczarski and their fellow cellmate, Gustav Schielke, when the three of them were sharing a prison cell.

Moczarski's only goal was to faithfully relate what he heard from Stroop, and Moczarksi's ability to recall what transpired in their conversations, and to organize all those bits and pieces into a coherent book is most admirable.

Perhaps the greatest value of this book for me is that the multitude of WW2 historic names, events, and places that are mentioned throughout compelled me to do an eye-opening search on the internet to deepen my knowledge of them. This book has refreshed my fascination with WW2 history, and made me order additional books that contain eye-witness personal accounts of that time.

I am only disappointed that neither Moczarski, nor the book's American editor, offered any information about Schielke's fate. Gustav Schielke's presence as a participant in many conversations is constant throughout the book. Thus, a reader would also like to know what happened to him (I did a basic internet search, but was unable to find anything -- if anyone knows what happened to Schielke, please share).

In general, the American edition of this book has been poorly edited -- and yet the name of the editor features prominently on the front page (while there is no mention of who translated the book into English). For example: there are many phrases in German throughout the text, but not all of them are translated. The editor should have assumed that most English readers do not understand German -- ALL German phrases needed English translation.

Although the amount of details might seem overwhelming at times, it is extremely interesting and reads like a novel. I love this book.

This is a fascinating volume that delves into the psyche of the SS Officer who is best known for his brutal suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion in 1943, and the ultimate destruction of the ghetto.
Written by a member of the Polish Home Army who shared a jail cell with Stroop for 255 days in 1949, the book relates the dialogue that occurred between the two men. It gives a good account of Stroop's military career from World War I onward.
Focusing not only on his role in Warsaw, Stroop goes into details of his participation in the destruction of the ghetto in Lvov, and readily admits his responsiblity in the liquidation of ghettos such as Rawa Ruska, Tarnopol, Stanislavov, and others. Also covered is his planned role as the leader of an SS police group for the subjugation of the southern Caucasus areas of Georgia, North Osetia,and Armenia, among others, if the Germans had managed to conquer these territories.
What comes across most vividly is the total lack of guilt feelings and remorse displayed by Stroop throughout.
This book provides an excellent insight into the mind of an unrepentant perpetrator of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and is a must-read for any student or reader of holocaust literature.

Moczarski, a Polish resistance fighter imprisoned in Warsaw after World War Two for political reasons, spent nine months in the same cell as Juergen Stroop, the Nazi commander in charge of the operation to obliterate the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Time hangs heavily in prison and if you believe Moczarski, Stroop gradually opened up and revealed his entire life story. The picture is depressingly bland. Stroop, an ill-educated man riven with anti-Semitism, seems above all to have been motivated by status and material possessions. His superiors didn't seem to think much of his mental abilities but through sheer persistence, the ability to hang around and a capacity for cruelty he managed to move up the ranks and ended up in charge of the operation to obliterate the ghetto.

If Moczarski is to be believed, Stroop was proud of the actions of his men, and regretted little if anything of what he had done. My only doubt is how accurate Moczarski's recollections are. He says he took extensive notes and cross-checked facts after he was released, but I'd like to know more about those notes. How did he manage to hang on to them in a prison system not known for its tenderness?

That said, this is a book definitely worth reading.