Bidspirit auction | The Stroop Report – Documents

The Stroop Report – Documents and Photographs from the Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto – New York, 1979 – first English edition - The Stroop Report on the Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto – Documents and Photographs – facsimile edition of the documents and photographs found in the possession of Jürgen Stroop, senior SS officer and Nazi war criminal who commanded the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. These documents were presented at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. The original materials were sent by Stroop to his superiors during the suppression of the uprising. At the end of the war, the documents were discovered by soldiers of the U.S. Seventh Army. Special facsimile edition of the documents and photographs, edited by Andrzej Wirth (who also edited the German edition, see previous item). New York, 1979 – first English edition. In the foreword to the English edition, Andrzej Wirth writes: “This edition of the Stroop Report appears nineteen years after the publication of the first German facsimile edition (Luchterhand, 1960), and three years after the German paperback edition (Sammlung Luchterhand, 1976). I was the editor responsible for the German editions. Publishing the report in 1960 required courage and perseverance. At that time, many regarded the uncomfortable past as something best left behind—at least in theory—and no longer wished to hear about it. The German edition was finally published thanks to the efforts of the writer Günter Grass... I was then the cultural editor of the Warsaw weekly Polityka, and Poland was the official repository of the report.” He adds that in the years since, photographs from the Stroop Report have been widely published in the international media, and he recounts the history of the report and the course of events in the Warsaw Ghetto leading up to the end of the uprising. In this edition, the original documents from the Stroop Report are presented in facsimile alongside English translations, printed page by page. The opening page of the report features the infamous document in which Stroop declared: ”There is no longer a Jewish residential district in Warsaw” following the suppression of the uprising. The report contains photographs of numerous documents – detailed daily dispatches sent by Stroop during the suppression of the uprising to Krüger, the supreme SS commander in Kraków. These reports were written on official letterhead between April 20 and May 16, 1943. The second part of the report includes 54 photographs taken during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In postwar trials, Stroop himself explained and described in detail the context surrounding each and every photograph. Already during the war, Stroop compiled the documents and produced three copies of the report: one was sent to Himmler, the second to Krüger, and the third he kept for himself. According to Stroop, the version of the report found by the Allies after the war was the copy originally received by Himmler. In the trials that followed, Stroop attempted to downplay its significance. Stroop was tried as part of the Dachau Trials. He was found guilty of war crimes for the execution of a prisoner of war and sentenced to death. After his trial, he was extradited to Poland to stand trial for his role in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. He was sentenced to death by the District Court in Warsaw on July 23, 1951, and was executed at the site of his crimes in Warsaw on March 6, 1952. [128] pages. 26 cm. Very good condition.