Otto Moll

Otto Moll was an SS-Hauptscharführer and part of the staff at Auschwitz. Born in Hohen Schönberg, Germany on March 4, 1915 and was executed on May 28, 1946 in Landsberg am Lech.

Moll joined the SS on May 1, 1935 (serial number 267670). He held various posts during his tenure at Auschwitz. From May 1941 until January 1945 he was Kommandoführer of the gardeners work detail, director of the employment service in the men's camp, head of the crematoria in Birkenau, Lagerführer of the Fürstengrube subcamp in Wesola near Myslowice and of the Gleiwitz 1 sub-camp in Gliwice.

In May 1941, Otto Moll was transferred from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to Birkenau where he was put in charge of digging the mass graves. From 1943 to the evacuation of the camp, Moll was chief of the crematoria. Alter Feinsilber, a member of the Sonderkommando at Birkenau who worked under Otto Moll's supervision, mentioned Moll in his testimony for the prosecution in a Kraków court:

"It happened that some prisoners offered resistance when about to be shot at the pit or that children would cry and then SS Quartermaster Sergeant Moll would throw them alive into the flames of the pit."

According to the former Sonderkommando prisoner Henryk Tauber:

Hauptscharführer Moll was the most degenerate of the lot. Before by arrival at the camp, he was in charge of the work at the Bunkers, where 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 Krematorien. 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 and often by Moll himself. On several occasions, Moll threw people into the flaming pits alive. He also practised shooting people from a distance. He ill-treated and beat 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. .

SS Hauptscharführer Otto Moll is said to have personally killed thousands of innocent victims (over 20 thousand according to some reports) during his time at Auschwitz-Birkenau. According to the infamous Auschwitz Kommandant Rudolf Höss, he and Sergeant Major Moll were both decorated by the Führer with the Cross of Merit, First Class, with Swords. Whether or not this is true has yet to be proven.

Otto Moll was transferred to a sub-camp of Dachau after Auschwitz-Birkenau was abandoned by the SS on January 18, 1945. On April 28, 1945, one day before the Dachau camp was liberated by American soldiers, Moll arrived at the main camp, along with a group of prisoners that he had led on an evacuation "death march." Moll was put on trial by an American Military Tribunal at Dachau in November 1945. He was charged with not allowing the prisoners to escape from the death march, which was a war crime, according to the Allies. He was executed on May 28, 1946 at the Landsberg am Lech prison.

Moll appears several times in the photo album of Karl-Friedrich Höcker of camp staff at a retreat.

He always said to his man: "Befehl ist Befehl!" ("An order is an order!"). This famous quote was made by scores of Nazis regardless of their rank when trying to justify or excuse themselves for their behavior. Unsurprisingly, these words were spoken at one time or another by a number of defendants at the Nuremberg Tribunal.

Citations and Further Reading

 * http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/index.php?option=com_ponygallery&Itemid=17&func=detail&id=497
 * http://www.mazal.org/archive/documents/Tauber/Tauber07.htm
 * http://www.mazal.org/archive/documents/Tauber/Tauber07.htm