The Oskar Schindler Enamel Factory, a branch of the Krakow Museum, will host a discussion on 28 February 2023 around the book ‘Crime Without Punishment’, in which journalists from Deutsche Welle, Interia and Wirtualna Polska followed the trail of unpunished Second World War criminals, revealing their post-war careers.

The result of the work of almost 30 people from the three editorial offices is a collection of 26 reports, interviews, and videos. 

A colourful plaque on the grave of a former director of a chocolate factory in Bonn reminds the world that crime should be followed by punishment. The inscription on it proclaims: “Obergruppenführer SS Wilhelm Koppe, senior SS and police commander in the General Government. Responsible for terror, mass murder, executions, Holocaust. Never punished!!!”. The cemetery worker patiently removes one plaque after another, but a mysterious hand puts new ones. Always on 1 November.

How is it possible that people like Wilhelm Koppe escaped punishment and led a peaceful life after the war? In ‘Crime Without Punishment’, not only do the criminals lose their anonymity, but the victims also come before us as concrete individuals who have been ripped from their everyday lives. Brutally murdered and stripped of their dignity – even after death, when their bodies were dumped, burned or quartered to be sold profitably. 

The moving stories, often accompanied by harrowing photographs, create a story like no other. Thanks to the reporters, we gain not only knowledge of events and people, but above all an insight into a world that seems terrifyingly unreal. We look at the photographs of people who know that they are about to die; at the despair of those who have just seen their loved ones die; at the footprints of those whom no one can recognise today. And next to them: the laughing faces of their executioners, the charming views of the neighbourhoods where they lived after the war; the suits, the glasses, the decorations.

Adrian Andrzejewski