CAUTION: THIS CHAPTER, AND ITS LINKS, ARE ABOUT GRUESOME ACTS OF WAR.
The Stroop Report, an album of horrifying pictures (Bildbericht) and narrative detail, gave Hitler the news he wanted to hear: "The Warsaw Ghetto Is No More."
Before Hitler’s troops killed their victims, they took pictures of what they found. They documented people living in primitive and atrocious conditions. They snapped photos of people hiding wherever they could: in houses, in bunkers, in cellars, in dug-outs.
Stroop himself had watched the ghetto burn. After the destruction was complete, he filed his report. (Follow this link to read the full report instead of the summary.)
The SS had utterly and totally destroyed the second-largest Jewish community in the world. Stroop, who survived the war, was later tried for war crimes.
He was found guilty by an American tribunal at Dachau, a former Nazi concentration camp. Stroop was executed - some say fittingly - in Warsaw on 8 September 1951.
Wladyslaw Szpilman, however, miraculously survived.
