Join Elżbieta Moczarska, translator Sean Gasper Bye and award-winning historian Roger Moorhouse for the UK launch of Elżbieta’s late-father’s book, Conversations with an Executioner.
Kazimierz Moczarski, the author, was a Polish writer, journalist, and soldier. He saw combat during the German invasion of Poland, after the country fell he fought the Nazi occupation as part of the resistance movement.
After the war, and following the USSR’s implementation of a puppet government in Poland, Kazimierz was imprisoned by the Communist regime. Here he shared a cell with Nazi war criminal Jürgen Stroop, the man responsible for the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. After Kazimierz was released, he wrote Conversations with an Executioner about his time sharing a prison cell with Stroop.
Join us at IWM London for this fascinating talk exploring Kazimierz Moczarski’s extraordinary wartime experiences. Following the talk, have your questions answered and explore IWM London’s Holocaust Galleries after hours.
About the book
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.
About the speakers
Elżbieta Moczarska
Elżbieta Moczarska has worked for both Polish and international companies in the fields of public and media relations, financial research and business development.
Her father used his extraordinary personal experiences during his time in a Stalinist prison with a Nazi war criminal to write Conversations with an Executioner, a book whose importance and relevance remains undiminished.
In 2014, in honour of her parents, Elżbieta established the Kazimierz and Zofia Moczarscy Foundation.
He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow and Translator-in-Residence at Princeton University. He serves on the staff of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society since 2015, Roger was awarded the Order of Merit of the Polish Republic in 2020, for services to Polish history.
Timetable
6:05pm Doors open
6:30pm Talk begins
7:15pm Q&A 8pmBook-signing
7:30pm Holocaust exhibition open
WHEN: Monday 9 November 2026, 6.05pm to 8.30pm
WHERE: Imperial War Museum London, Lambeth Road, London, SE1 6HZ
TICKETS: here
From the editor: Read more about Kazimierz Moczarski in our article: 255 days with the executioner – How a Home Army soldier talked in a death cell to the German butcher of Warsaw Ghetto
