Throughout the Second World War there were many men and women who worked inside of the
concentration camps as guards. Many came from all walks of life, and some would leave normal
lives to become brutes who would go down in history as some of the most evil people of
World War 2. Auschwitz became the deadliest concentration camp established by the SS,
and over 1 million people were executed and were killed inside the largest camp, and some
of the guards that worked there became notorious for their evil. Irma Grese was known as the
beautiful beast and she was known for shooting prisoners with her pistol and also patrolling
with a large dog that would attack the inmates, but there were many other sadists who revelled
in making the lives of thousands a complete misery. One of the most brutal and barbaric
guards that worked at Auschwitz on the 28th May 1946 was led towards a gallows inside
of Landsverg Prison, and he was flanked by many American guards who then handed him over
to the executioner. Otto Moll was in his 20s when he worked at Auschwitz, but he became
a notorious executioner himself, who it was believed was personally responsible for the
deaths of around 20,000 innocent people. But what is the story of his crimes and also his
execution? Join us today as we look at the execution of the butcher of Auschwitz, as
always to support our channel please make sure to subscribe.
Otto Moll was born on the 4th March 1915 inside of the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg Strelitz,
and he was born at a time when the First World War was engulfing Europe. He would have a
rather ordinary upbringing, but then before he became a member of the SS, Moll would work
as a gardener. But he would join Himmler’s evil paramilitary organisation on the 1st
May 1935, but the specific part of the SS he would join was rather bizarre to begin
with. He became part of the battalion orchestra, and they would entertain other SS men inside
of barracks and training centres. However in January 1937 when he was heading back from
a performance with the orchestra, the truck carrying he and his fellow SS musicians got
into an accident, and one of his band mates was killed. Otto Moll with this had a severe
bang on the head and he suffered from a head trauma and then also went blind in his right
eye. Some historians have claimed that this injury led to him having further problems
that changed his personality that made him more deadly and psychotic. Some have gone
further saying that the bang on the dead led to Otto Moll becoming a psychopath, and some
have said that he was a man from his injury that was mentally and physically ill.
Shockingly others have said that he should have been bizarrely excused from some of his
actions, and one German historian states how Otto Moll was exploited by the SS and that
they manipulated him to make him more of a monster. But following his recovery he became
a member of the SS Death’s Head units, who were in charge of overseeing and running the
concentration and extermination camps inside of Nazi Germany. He was rather well thought
of in the SS, and he would go back to gardening, and would oversee inside of the concentration
camps a work detail who would look after the grounds and who would act as gardeners. He
would in 1941 move from Sachsenhausen, to Auschwitz which was expanding on a huge scale.
Rudolf Hoss had been given permission by Heinrich Himmler the head of the SS to make a huge
concentration camp where he would try to murder as many people as he could. To do this Hoss
needed large amounts of guard staff and many men and women were transported to Auschwitz
to work as guards, and they would become completely brutal and barbaric.
Otto Moll was then when at Auschwitz placed in charge of the prisoners who would dig mass
graves for the executions that would take place. There were many execution methods used
in the camp, and shooting was a commonly used method. But Otto Moll for over three and a
half years worked in other roles at Auschwitz, and he would then become the director of employment
services at Auschwitz Birkenau. In 1944 he was then the man who oversaw all of the crematoria
in Auschwitz Birkenau, the main execution centre inside the camp. He was closely linked
to Rudolf Hoss and the pair would together be decorated by Hitler and awarded the War
Merit Cross first class with swords. Otto Moll would justify whatever he asked of inmates
by screaming ‘an order is an order,’ and he was a brutal and barbaric man. As 1944
would come around, it was clear that the crematorias at Auschwitz were not big enough to burn all
the bodies of those who were being killed inside of the gas chambers. Huge deportations
took place, as people from across Europe were sent to Auschwitz to be killed. But it was
Otto Moll who would force the inmates to dig large open air pits so that they could burn
the bodies inside of these as the ovens and crematoria could not cope. He also converted
a farmhouse to become another gas chamber. One former worker who was overseen by Otto
Moll would describe his actions. He said, ‘At that time, on average around 18,000
Hungarians were murdered daily at Birkenau.
Transports would come from dawn till dusk, one after another, and around 20% of those
arriving were sent to the camp. They were recorded in series A and B. The rest were
gassed and incinerated in the crematorium furnaces. In cases where there were not enough
prisoners, they were executed by shooting and burned in pits. As a rule, a gas chamber
was only utilized for groups bigger than 200 people because it was uneconomical to use
it for smaller groups. It sometimes happened that during executions by shooting some prisoners
put up a fight or children cried, and then Oberscharführer Moll would throw these people
into the burning pits alive.[7] I personally witnessed the following scenes. Moll ordered
a naked woman to sit on the corpses near a pit, while he shot at prisoners and threw
them to the burning pit, ordering the woman to jump and sing. Of course she did so, in
hopes of saving her life. After executing everybody, Moll shot this woman and she was
then incinerated. On another occasion, Moll found a few rings and a watch on a boy from
our group. He halted him at the crematory, had him thrown him into a furnace, started
a fire using paper, and then they got him out, hanged him by his arms, tortured and
interrogated him to find out where he had gotten the items found on him. Of course,
he told them everything, identified the prisoner who had given these items to him, and then
he was set on fire from the waist down and was ordered to run toward the wires, where
he was executed.’
More workers continued to testify about his evil. Another member of the Sonderkommando
said, ‘Hauptscharführer Moll was the most degenerate of the lot. Before his 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 crematoria. 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 crematoria V and restarted the activity of Bunker 2,
which had been lying idle, and its pits. In the yard of the crematory, 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.’
Further accusations against Otto Moll would state that, ‘The head of the crematoria,
Moll, once took a child away from its mother, I saw it at Crematorium IV. There were two
huge pits where the corpses were burned. He threw the child into the boiling corpse fat
that had collected in ditches around the pit and then said to his assistant: "Now I'll
eat till I'm satiated, now I have done my duty." Another way to satisfy his [Moll's]
perverse murder lust was the killing of little children who he threw alive into the boiling
human fat at the front sides of the pits. When the camp commandant or other SS commanders
appeared at the site of the crematoria, however, Moll controlled himself and subdued his abnormal
tendencies. Then the machinery of murder took its customary, factory-like course, without
there being any special excesses.’
He was a completely brutal man, and he would slaughter and kill the most vulnerable including
children. It was said he was a scary and jealous man, and that one time he was overheard saying
that if Eichmann ordered him to execute his own family then he would do it. He would burn
children alive too, and would also shoot women who were forced to strip, as well as beating
and bludgeoning people to death with clubs and iron bars. He also set dogs on people
as well as throwing prisoners against the electric fences. He was a barbaric executioner,
and he murdered himself 3000 prisoners with his execution squad that were said to have
been dangerous in February 1945. But as the Second World War turned against the Germans,
Auschwitz Birkenau would be abandoned by the SS in January 1945, and Otto Moll was then
sent to Dachau where he arrived with a group of prisoners on a death march. HE was arrested
by the American forces who would liberate Dachau, and he would later admit that he wanted
Auschwitz bombing and that he wanted to kill the remaining prisoners.
In November 1945, Otto Moll was placed on trial in front of an American military court
in what was known as the Dachau trials. What was shocking was that he was only tried for
his actions inside of Dachau, and what he had done at Auschwitz was not considered.
He was accused of shooting and executing prisoners who collapsed during the death march, and
for this he was sentenced to death for the executions of 26 people. But he was then transferred
to Landsberg Prison to await his execution. On the 28th May 1946 he was taken from his
prison cell and was then led into a courtyard where a scaffold was there, and he was then
led up the stairs. Quickly an executioner took possession of Otto Moll who placed a
noose around his neck and also a black cap, and then he was placed over the trapdoor and
this was then released.
Otto Moll was a brutal and barbaric guard who worked inside of Auschwitz and was responsible
for the executions and deaths of thousands. 20,000 people its believed were killed by
Moll and his group of executioners and death squads, but he was a man who was unhinged
and who himself was executed, but his work at Auschwitz was not taken into account, and
he was only executed on the crimes he participated in whilst at Dachau.
Thanks for watching
To support our channel, please make sure to subscribe
Thanks again for watching