Portret oprawcy – rzecz do napisania – the thing to write

Abstract

This article synthesises the topic of the views of Nazi war criminals in the Polish post-war prose (1944–1989). The author enumerates the most important pieces of Polish prose treating the motif of German war criminals. This outline is an invitation to describe a portrait of the executioners and it signals several important problems related to the subject, including the question of the genesis of evil and the most important presentations of Nazis in Polish literature. Another significant issue is that of the transformation of the image of Nazis over time during the Communist era in Poland and the related stereotypes of Germans in Polish culture through history. The article also briefly discusses the topic of the executioners in the work of Jonathan Littell and Bogdan Rutha