Otto Moll, born in 1915 in Mecklenburg, trained as a gardener before joining the SS-Wachverband V "Brandenburg" in 1935. His early life was marked by personal hardship: a serious car accident in 1937 left him with a skull fracture and blindness in one eye, and in 1940 his first wife and unborn child died from blood poisoning. By April 1938, he was working in the SS garden at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and he soon became part of the expanding concentration camp system.
According to his own statement to US investigators from November 3, 1945, "from 1941 until January 1945, I likewise managed a gardening unit of the Economic and Administrative Main Office in the Auschwitz concentration camp".
Afterwards, Moll was stationed at the Kaufering II subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp. Moll stated that "no prisoner in my camp died from illness or malnutrition, and none were hanged or shot. There was not a single death in my camp ... no mistreatment of any prisoners by any guards occurred. No prisoner was beaten, kicked, or otherwise abused by the guards".
SS-Hauptscharführer Otto Moll - the dear gardener from next door?
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| Otto Moll (source) |
At the CODOH Holocaust denial discussion forum, the poster Stubble writes that "Going over what there is, I can't rule out that he indeed just ran the garden (farm) detail and was hated for it, and thus framed up for something different".
The record tells a very different story.
To begin with, archival correspondence from the Fürstengrube mine administration (October 1943 – February 1944) mentions Moll as command leader of the Fürstengrube subcamp of Auschwitz III (Monowitz), which directly refutes his claim of merely managing "a gardening unit of the Economic and Administrative Main Office" (Nuremberg document NI-10412, images from Arolsen Archives/2963000).
In reality, Moll was deployed wherever the camp administration required him. He served as command leader of the penal company (1942), the Sonderkommando responsible for clearing mass graves in Birkenau (1942), the Fürstengrube subcamp (1943–44), the Gleiwitz subcamp (1944), the crematoria at Birkenau (1944) and the Gleiwitz subcamp again (1944).
Early witness accounts from 1945–1946 across Europe leave little doubt that Moll played a central role in the on-site operation of the extermination facilities.
Sonderkommando prisoner Szlama Dragon testified in February 1945 that Moll "directed the mass cremation of people arriving from various countries". Henryk Mandelbaum likewise identified him as head of the crematorium. Pery Broad, an SS man writing a report for the British , described Moll as one of the "greatest butchers of this past war". Rudolf Höß confirmed to US investigators that Moll was repeatedly used for executions and special tasks: "Whenever I wanted an extra good job done, I would send Moll."
Later testimonies, including those from the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, reinforce the same picture. Witnesses described Moll as an organizer of cremation operations, a supervisor of Sonderkommando units, and a figure directly involved in shootings.
Further excerpts are reproduced at the end of this post.
The denier's "Holocaust Encylopedia" writes that Moll was "sentenced to death on 13 December 1945 after a show trial staged by the U.S. in Dachau" due to "unchallengeable claims" that Moll "had been in charge of an inmate unit deployed at the gassing bunkers".
However, Moll was not tried at Dachau for his activities in Auschwitz. The charges against him concerned the shooting of 26 prisoners during the evacuation march from Dachau toward Tyrol in April 1945 (examination of Wilhelm Metzler). When the witness Karl Stroh testified that Moll was known among the Jewish prisoners as "the hangman of Auschwitz", the court ruled that the "objection of the defense to the introduction of testimony attacking the character of one of the accused is sustained on the grounds that no evidence of good character or any evidence of bad character has been introduced to the court".
Yet again, the "Holocaust Encyclopedia" demonstrates that even the most basic facts are apparently too much to ask.
Few months after the Dachau trial sentenced Moll to death, US investigators became interested in his potential as witness. In his interrogations on April 15 and 16, 1946 and further in the joint interrogation with Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß, Moll admitted into his various functions in the Auschwitz complex, including as head of crematoria in 1944 and clearing the mass graves in 1942, though still down-playing his role and atrocties and did not provide testimony incriminating other individuals.
Interestingly, the author Hans Schmid assumes that Moll's "psychologically pathological and abnormal" atrocities were partly caused "by his brain injury" and that "the symptoms of post-traumatic psychosis are strikingly evident in him: a general emotional blunting, a lack of compassion and consideration for others, disinhibition, and an uncontrolled increase in aggressive impulses." (Hans Schmid, Otto Moll - "der Henker von Auschwitz", Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 54, 2006).
Selected Testimonies On Otto Moll
Jewish Sonderkommando prisoner Szlama Dragon on 26 February 1945 to Soviet investigators:
"The selection of people for cremation was the responsibility of the SS fascist Mengele, a doctor, and SS [man] Mol [Moll], who directed the mass cremation of people arriving from various countries and of various nationalities, regardless of gender and age."
(Mattogno, Sonderkommando Auschwitz II, p. 52)
Jewish Sonderkommando prisoner Henryk Mandelbaum on February 27, 1945, towards Soviet investigators:
"The head of the crematorium was SS Oberscharführer Fass [Peter Voss] and later Hauptscharführer Moll Otto"
(Mattogno, Sonderkommando Auschwitz I, p. 180)
On 10 - 11 May 1945, Slzama Dragon testified to Polish investigators:
"On 9 December 1942, in the evening, Moll, Plage, Palitsch and Siwy as well as Arbeitseinsatz[führer] Mikus came to Block 14. Moll declared that he was going to make a selection of workers [p. 2/103] for a rubber factory. Each of us approached him, Moll asked him his profession, observed him carefully; if he was healthy and strong, he assigned him to this group who, according to his statements, were to go to work in the rubber factory. My brother and I declared that we wereailors by profession, and [we] were also assigned to this group established then by Moll and his comrades. On the morning of the next day, i.e., 10 December 1942, immediately after all of the Kommandos [komando] had left for work, Moll came to Block 14 and ordered: “Sonderkommando raus [outside].” From this we learned that we were part of a certain “Sonderkommando,” and not of the Kommando assigned to the rubber factory. We did not realize what that Sonderkommando was, because no one had explained it to us. On Moll’s orders, we presented ourselves in front of the block, where SS men surrounded us and led us out of the camp in two groups of 100 people. We were taken to a forest, where there was a masonry cottage [chałupa], covered by a thatched roof. The windows were bricked up. On the door leading into this house was fixed a sheet-metal plate with the inscription “Hochspannung – Lebensgefahr” [High Voltage – Danger of Death]. Two wooden shacks were located at a distance of about 30-40 meters from that little house. On the other side there were 4 pits, with dimensions of 30 meters long, 7 meters wide and 3 meters deep. The edges of these pits were sooty and burned. We were lined up in front of the house; Moll came over and told us that we would work there cremating old and lice-infested people; as for us, we would be fed; at night we would be taken back to the camp, and we would have to work, because otherwise those who did not want to work would be beaten and would be left to the [= mistreated with] sticks and dogs. The SS men who were escorting us actually had dogs. Then we were divided into various groups. I, along with 11 others, was assigned to the group that, as it turned out later, had to extract the corpses from that little house. All 12 of us were fitted with [gas] masks and led to the door of the cottage. Moll opened this door, and only then did we see that in this small house lay naked corpses of people of various ages and both genders. Moll ordered us to transport these corpses from inside the house to the courtyard in front of the door. We began to work in this manner, four of us carrying one corpse. This irritated Moll, [who] rolled up his sleeves and threw a corpse in front of the door into the courtyard. When we declared in spite of this lesson that we could
not manage to work like this, he divided us up into groups of two. As the corpses were lying in the courtyard, a dentist, assisted by an SS man, pulled out the [gold] teeth, a barber – supervised by an SS man – cut the hair, [p. 3/104] then another group loaded the corpses onto carts [na wózki /rollwa-
gen/[sic]. These carts were placed on narrow rails [a narrow-gauge track] that went all the way to the edge of the pits. These rails ran between two pits. Another group was engaged in preparing the pits to burn the corpses. At the bottom of the pits, they first placed large [pieces of] wood, then smaller and smaller wood [pieces] in a crisscross pattern, and finally dry branches. Another group picked up the corpses brought in on carts at the edge of the pits, and threw them into the pits. When all the corpses had been transported from the cottage to the pits, Moll sprayed these corpses with petroleum at the four corners of the pit, set fire to a rubber comb and threw it into an oil-soaked spot. The fire flared up and the corpses burned. While Moll lit [the pyre], we stood in front of the house and watched carefully. After all the corpses had been re-
moved from the house, we had to clean it thoroughly, wash the floor with water, then sprinkle it with sawdust and whitewash the walls.[...]
When we moved the pillow away, it turned out that the child had its eyes open and gave the impression of being alive. We took this child along with the pillow to Moll, telling him that the child was alive. Moll snatched it from us [grabbing it] by the arm, took it to the edge of a pit, laid it on the ground, put his heel on its neck, and then threw it into the fire. I saw this whole scene with my own eyes and noticed that, at the moment when Moll put [the boot] on the child’s neck, the child moved its arms. The whole time, this child did not cry out; I cannot say whether it was breathing, because I did not examine it, however
[p. 6/107] it struck us that it looked different from the lifeless corpses.[...]
When everyone was now in the undressing room, Moll stood on a bench and gave a speech to the people assembled. He told them that they would go to the camp, where the strong would be sent to work, the sick and the women would remain in the blocks. At the same time, he pointed to the buildings in Brzezinka and said that, before entering the camp, everyone had to bathe, because otherwise the camp authorities would not let them in. When everyone had undressed, they were pushed naked into the gas chamber. At first, there were 3 gas chambers, but later a fourth was installed. The first could hold 1,500, the second 800, the third 600, and the fourth 150 people. From the undressing room, people passed into the rooms through a narrow corridor. The rooms were marked “Zur Desinfektion” [To Disinfection]. When the room was full, the door was closed. This was done by the SS guards, very often Moll personally. Then, Mengele gave the
order to Scheinmetz, who, as in the bunkers, went to the Red-Cross vehicle, took out the gas [p. 7/108] can, opened it and poured its contents into the chamber through a small window in the side wall. This little window was quite high, so that he reached it [by climbing] up a [step] ladder. And here, too, as at the bunkers, he did it with a mask. After a while, Mengele announced that the people were no longer alive, saying: “Es ist schon fertig” [It is already done], and he left in the Red-Cross car together with Scheinmetz. Then Moll opened the door to the gas chamber, we put on our masks, and dragged the corpses from the individual chambers through a small corridor into the undressing room, and through the undressing room and the next small corridor to the furnaces."
(Mattogno, Sonderkommando Auschwitz II, p.61, 64-65)
Jewish Sonderkommando Henryk Tauber on 24 May 1945 to Polish investigators in Cracow:
"Finally, he had to climb the barbed wire, which was not electrified during the day. and when he was at the top, the head of the crematoriums, Moll, first name Otto Hauptscharführer / Master sergeant], killed him with a shot.
...
Hauptscharführer Moll was the most degenerate of the lot. Before my arrival at the camp, he was in charge of the work at the Bunkers, where [not far away] they incinerated the gassed victims in pits. Then he was transferred for a while to another section. In view of the preparation necessary for the “reception” of convoys from Hungary in 1944, he was put in charge of all the Krenntorien. It is he who organized the large-scale extermination of the people arriving in these convoys. Just before the arrival of the Hungarian transports, he ordered pits to be dug alongside Krematorium V and restarted the activity of Bunker 2, which had been lying idle, and its pits. In the yard of the Krematorium, there were notices on posts. with inscriptions telling the new arrivals from the transports that they were to go to the camp where work was waiting for them, but that first they had to take a bath and undergo disinfestation. For that, it was necessary for them to undress and put all their valuables in baskets specially placed for this purpose in the yard. Moll repeated the same thing in his speeches to the new arrivals. There were so many convoys that sometimes it happened that the gas chambers were incapable of containing all the new arrivals. The excess people were generally shot, one at a time. On several occasions, Moll threw people into the flaming pits alive. He also practised shooting people from a distance. He ill-treated and beat the Sonderkommando prisoners, treating them like animals. Those who were in his personal service told us that he used a piece of wire to fish out gold objects from the box containing the jewels taken from new arrivals, and took them off in a briefcase. Among the objects left by the people who came to be gassed, he took furs and different types of food, in particular fat. When he took food, he said smilingly to the SS around him that one had to take advantage before the lean years came. Under his direction, the Sonderkommando was strengthened and increased to about 1000 prisoners."
Izrael Rozenborn on 24 May 1945 in Lodz:
"To save time, the Germans threw little children alive into these flaming pits. One of these killers was SS Hauptscharfuhrer Moll, a sadist, who seized little children by the hair and, with his pistol, shot the child."
http://polishjews.org/shoahtts/001.htm
Regina Plucer testfied on May 30, 1945 that up to the time crematorium 2 was dismantled "Obersturmfuhrer MOLL was in charge."
https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2015/08/testimonies-of-prisoners-of-demolition.html
Tibor Wahl on June 26, 1945, to the "Budapest Commission for the Welfare of Deported Hungarian Jews":
"We marched on foot as far as Gleiwitz. Our leader was Scharführer Moll, who had previously been the head of the crematorium in Birkenau."
(DEGOB protocol 162)
The SS officer Wilhelm Boger mentioned in a report on Auschwitz written on July 5, 1945 in Ludwigsburg on the former "SS-Hscha. Moll" as leader of the "Sonderkommando" together with Voss and Muhsfeldt.
https://holocausthistory.site/1945-07-05-the-1945-report-of-ss-officer-boger-on-auschwitz/
The Auschwitz officer Pery Broad in a report July 13, 1945, to the British:
"In his duties at Birkenau, Hössler also had a very zealous assistant at his side, SS-Hauptscharführer Moll. Moll and Palitzsch must surely be counted among the greatest butchers of this past war. … One of the white farmhouses had also been put back into operation. It was designated Bunker 5, and Moll carried out his bloody work there."
Auschwitz prisoner Charles Bendel, on October 1, 1945, at the British Belsen trial, answered "Hauptscharführer Moll" on the question "under whose authority was the Sonderkommando?".
Rudolf Höß testified on April 3, 1946, that Palitsch "was also used like the other non-commissioned leaders in executions, as, for instance, Moll" and on April 4, "Whenever I wanted an extra good job done, I would send Moll" (National Archives, Record Group 238, Interrogations, Summaries of Interrogations, and Related Records, Hoess, Rudolf)
Rudolf Höß further testified on April 16, 1945:
"I know Moll from Sachsenhausen. During my activity in Sachsenhausen Moll was there as a gardener between the years 1938 and 1940. He was responsible for all the gardens of the camp. Moll was a difficult subordinate, because he had suffered a bad injury before when he still belonged to the guard troops and therefore he had been taken away from active service and he had been transferred to some less exacting duty. He frequently had arguments with his superiors. I myself was adjutant at the time and was responsible for all the work of the command staff. I usually got along well with him because I would make due allowances for his peculiarities. I did not use him much for duty as a subordinate leader which he was. I saw to it that he could fulfill his duties as a gardener absolutely independently and for this reason he somehow felt attached to me. When I was transferred to Auschwitz in 1940, Moll approached me at once to get transferred to Auschwitz too. I believe it was in 1941 that he arrived but I am no longer able to state the date exactly. When he came to Auschwitz I used him in the agriculture establishment and put him in charge of a work detail. He carried out the most difficult and exacting work, was very independent, but again always got into arguments with other superior officers.
...
A When the extermination action started in 1941, I took Moll as a subordinate leader for one of these farm buildings. He served there, however I cannot give you any particular details because he did not in any way become conspicuous. He was responsible for the supervision at this place over the prisoners that were employed there and including the guards who were responsible for the security of the prisoners.
This farm that I mentioned was the place where the prisoners were being gassed and Moll was responsible to see that they were taken into the houses, that everything was being done, and after they were gassed and the bodies removed, that the teeth were pulled and all those other details which I gave you the other day.
Q Then he was responsible for the gassing, the removal of bodies, the cremating, and all of that?
A Yes, he was responsible for that.
Q Was he also responsible for the disposal of the bodies gassed there? By cremation?
A That too, yes. Especially that particularly and before that I had used Moll to effect the burning of the corpses who were lying in mass graves out in the open. He carried out these duties with great independence and I did not have to worry at all about his work detail. Later, in 1942, when the crematorium was finished, Moll was put in charge by me of one-half of the entire extermination installations. Later, when larger intervals came about in extermination actions, Moll was put in charge of a labor camp on the outside. He was sent to Gleiwitz. Before that he was in charge of a labor camp attached to a coal mine, the name of which I am not able to recall. He built up a completely new labor camp on that side and only after that was he transferred to the German State Railroad repair shops in Gleiwitz to supervise the attached labor camp there. When more extensive actions were started again, Moll was recalled for them. In 1944 I recalled Moll from his labor camp and used him to supervise the entire extermination plant....
Q Did Moll have any particular animosity or prejudice against Jews or any other race or class of people?
A I never observed it and I cannot say whether that was so.
Q Do you think he killed all inmates regardless of their racial extraction or nationality with equal lack of feeling?
A Yes.Q What do you know about Moll’s executions by machine gun or pistol?
A Yes, I know something about that. For instance, sometimes there were inmates who were paralyzed and it was difficult to get into the gas chambers, or who, for some other reason, could not be brought into the gas chambers, and he would kill them by a shot in the neck....
Q Did you ever hear him referred to as the "man of action" because of the efficiency with which he carried out these executions?
A His comrades always thought he was crazy and he was never rated as all there....
Gluecks's expression for him was "crazy dog".
(NARA, Record Group 238: National Archives Collection of World War II War Crimes Records
Series: Interrogations, Summaries of Interrogations, and Related Records File Unit Hoess, Rudolf)
Jewish Sonderkommando prisoner Filip Müller in 1946:
In the summer of 1944, our previous chief, the SS man Forst, was replaced by a new SS man, Moll, supposedly because he did not have sufficient organizational ability and energy. Moll handled everything reorganized everything and also set up pits for burning corpses. When there was a lot of work, he himself helped throw the bodies into them: he rolled up his sleeves and worked for two men. This fanatic and madman, who neither smoked nor drank, repeatedly declared that an order is an order, and that if the Führer ordered him to, he would burn even his own wife with his child. His only positive trait was his humanity toward people during shootings, and his favorite amusement was playing with the children of mothers awaiting death. He would approach a mother with a smile, kiss her child, give it a piece of chocolate, and then take the child away with the promise that he would bring it back. However, he threw them alive into the seething human fat. He did this several times a day and then said: ‘I have already done enough for the Reich!’"
(Kraus, Tovarna na smrt, p. 143- 145)
Manuscript found in 1952 on the grounds of the camp, attributed to Sonderkommando prisoner Lejb Langfus writes:
“Hauptscharführer Moll lined the people up in groups of four, one after another in a straight line, and with a series of shots he killed them all. If someone turned his head to the side, [Moll] threw him alive into the burning pit of the dead. If someone refused to go into the chamber, [Moll] seized him by the hands, twisted them, pushed him to the ground, and trampled him to death. As a rule, when a transport arrived, he would jump onto a bench, cross his hands over his chest, and give a short speech saying that they were to go to the bath and would then be assigned to various work details. If anyone expressed doubt about the truth of his words, [Moll] punished him with a severe beating and at the same time tried to create a wild, chaotic rush so that people would lose their sense of direction.”
(Inmitten des grauenvollen Verbrechens Handschriften von Mitgliedern des Sonderkommandos, p. 183)
Manuscript by Salmen Lewenthal found in 1968 on the grounds of the camps:
"When they had already been separated from the people and could no longer meet anyone […] in the camp only constantly […] to those coming for the first time into the little woods, where the bunkers were then located, the murderer Oberscharführer Moll, known throughout the world, [gave an address/speech?]."
(Inmitten des grauenvollen Verbrechens Handschriften von Mitgliedern des Sonderkommandos, p. 206)
On January 17, 1964, SS man Bruno Schlage testified at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial
"At the crematorium there was a permanent detail under the command of Hauptscharführer Moll. He was directly subordinate to the camp commandant."
(Das Verfahren: 8. Verhandlungstag (17.01.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 4837)
On October 15, 1959, Karl Bracht testified:
"At that time, the leader of the penal company was SS-Hauptscharführer Moll. […] In the penal company, shootings and acts of physical violence resulting in death occurred daily. The shootings were carried out almost exclusively by Moll."
(Das Verfahren: 73. Verhandlungstag (03.08.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 14061 - 14063)
Filip Müller's examination at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial on October 5, 1964:
"Hauptscharführer Moll [had only] one eye; he was a pronounced organizer of the burnings. He carried out the extermination with the same dedication as a director building a factory. And [he possessed] strict discipline. With the work details he did it like this: ‘I need 50 people.’ Not that the kapos would say ‘this one or that one goes,’ but he himself selected the prisoners, and I was often among those prisoners."
(Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20547)
SS man Bernhard Walter's examination at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial on August 14, 1964:
"I had known Moll from earlier. Moll was known as a Jew-hater. At that time— I believe it was in 1936 in Oranienburg—he had an accident, a severe skull fracture, and he was also blind in one eye. He attributed this to an accident involving a Jew. And since then, he apparently developed an obsession about Jews. For that reason, I knew Moll. One day—we were supposed to play on the radio; he was then with the band—it was generally known that he was lying seriously injured in the hospital and that some kind of Jewish vehicle had run into him or something like that. In any case, that is how I knew Moll. And I can also remember seeing him out there in Birkenau, when I was there, striking prisoner columns with a stick, a regular walking cane."
(Das Verfahren: 77. Verhandlungstag (14.08.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 14811)
On April 22, 1959, SS officer Franz Hofmann testified to West-German investigators:
"I also remember the SS non-commissioned officer Moll, who was likewise active at the gas chambers. Moll was known for shooting a few prisoners at random upon the arrival of transports in order to establish authority and command respect."
(Das Verfahren: Vernehmungsprotokolle der Angeklagten. Der 1. Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 3871)
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