Conversations with an Executioner, Kazimierz Moczarski
Conversations with an Executioner, Kazimierz Moczarski
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Conversations with an Executioner
255 Days Imprisoned with the Nazi who Destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto

Author: Kazimierz Moczarski, Sean Gasper Bye

Narrator: Mark Elstob

Unabridged: 13 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Steerforth

Published: 08/18/2026

Synopsis

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.

About The Author

Kazimierz Moczarski was born in Warsaw in 1907, and studied law at Warsaw University and the Sorbonne. During the Nazi Germany 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 ten years in prison. It was during this time that he was locked up with the Nazi war criminal, Jürgen Stroop. After his release, Moczarski worked as a journalist, and began writing his masterpiece, Conversations with an Executioner. Moczarski died in 1975, weakened by years of torture during his time in prison.Sean Gasper Bye is a translator from Polish. His translations have won the EBRD Literary Prize and the Asymptote Close Approximations Prize; and been shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, a National Jewish Book Award, the Sami Rohr Prize, and the National Translation Award. He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow and Translator-in-Residence at Princeton University. He is a Senior Consultant for the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), having previously served as Interim Executive Director. He lives in Philadelphia.

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Quotes

"A Polish classic which evokes the past but also sheds light on the predicaments of the present." — Anne Applebaum, author of Autocracy, Inc.

"It’s a stark X-ray of a Nazi soul."
—Publishers Weekly

"This volume hits hard and is a taut, direct, and haunting blend of journalistic precision and visceral storytelling that will grip historians, Holocaust scholars, and general readers."
—Library Journal, Starred Review

"This fascinating revelation of how a good little middle class boy turns into a Nazi mass murderer is all the more chilling for the forensic, at times witty, style in which his horrified cellmate and near-victim records it. A page-turner and must-read for understanding the workings of the Holocaust."
—Adam Zamoyski, author of Poland: A History

"An extraordinary book, almost impossible to categorize: simultaneously an act of witness and a work of the imagination, a brilliant portrait of a mediocre man’s rise within the Nazi hierarchy, unsparing and yet deeply human." — Jane Rogoyska, author of Hotel Exile

"Quite simply one of the most remarkable books to emerge out of World War II. Part unlikely memoir and part biography, it gives an insight into the Nazi mind that is as fascinating as it is chilling. Outstanding."
—Roger Moorehouse, author of Wolfpack: Inside Hitler’s U-Boat War

"A remarkable document. By turns shocking and chilling but always compelling, Moczarski's prison conversations with a senior, serial and shameless Nazi killer provide an invaluable insight into the heart of a hideous ideology."
—Jonathan Dimbleby, author of Endgame 1944

"Essential reading for all those interested in the Nazi occupation of Poland, the mass murder of Polish Jews and the larger history of the Second World War."
—Antony Polonsky, Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University and Chief Historian, Global Education Outreach Project, Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw

"A remarkable feat of reportage and timely insight into the Nazi mind."
—Charlie English, author of The CIA Book Club

"An intriguing document that portrays Stroop as the exemplary perpetrator: a mediocrity promoted above his abilities, but fanatical in his allegiance to Hitler, Himmler and Nazi ideology. Moczarski, working from memory, brings to light the workings of the Nazi mind with penetrating insight."
—Dan Stone, author of The Holocaust: An Unfinished History

 "Extraordinary, original, gripping, and painfully relevant to our times."
—Philippe Sands, author of East West Street

 "A richly textured three-dimensional portrait of a two-dimensional mass murderer who presided over the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, never revealing a hint of a conscience. Although Hannah Arendt did not coin the phrase 'the banality of evil' until much later, Jürgen Stroop already embodied it."
—Andrew Nagorski, author of Hitlerland

"A fascinating and totally unexpected account of one of the darkest periods of the Second World War."
—Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad

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