Otto Hermann Moll was born on March 4, 1915, in the town of Hohen Schönberg, then part of the German Empire. When Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, Moll was 17 years old. He trained as a gardener and joined the SS on May 30, 1935.
In the Nazi state, the SS controlled the German police forces and the concentration camp system. From 1939, the SS assumed responsibility for the so-called Jewish question, and after 1941 its leadership planned and carried out the annihilation of European Jews, now known as the Holocaust.
Moll was musically active and became a member of an SS marching battalion orchestra that performed in SS barracks and public places. In January 1937, during a journey with his marching band from Bernau to Oranienburg, the SS truck collided with a car. One SS man was killed and Moll was critically injured.
He was treated in a hospital for several months, suffering from a fractured skull and losing an eye. It has been suggested that because of the accident he suffered from frontal lobe syndrome, an organic damage that can manifest itself in psychotic or psychopathic behavior. As a result, Moll became a physically and mentally ill person who was deliberately exploited as a murderer by the criminal Nazi regime.
From 1938, Moll was employed at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he worked as head of the gardeners' work detail and was protected by Rudolf Höss, who belonged to the camp's leadership. The Second World War began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
In May 1940, around 60 kilometers west of Kraków, the Germans established the Auschwitz concentration camp. The direct reason for its establishment was that mass arrests of Poles were increasing beyond the capacity of existing local prisons. The camp's commandant became Moll's former superior, Rudolf Höss.
The first 30 prisoners, German criminals with green badges, arrived in Auschwitz on May 20, 1940, from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. These "greens" did much to establish the sadism of early camp life, directed particularly at Polish inmates.
The first transport of Polish male prisoners arrived on June 4, 1940, when the Germans deported a group of 728 Poles from the prison in Tarnów. Among them were soldiers of the September campaign, members of underground independence organizations, secondary school pupils and students, and a small group of Polish Jews. They received numbers from 31 to 758.
On May 2, 1941, commandant Rudolf Höss brought Otto Moll to Auschwitz, where he lived in the camp with his wife and two daughters. His first wife, Elli, had also worked in the concentration camp but died of blood poisoning in 1940. Moll remarried only a few weeks after her death.
Many former Auschwitz prisoners described Moll as the worst SS man in the entire camp. He distinguished himself with particular sadism toward prisoners, and because he had a glass eye he was nicknamed "Cyclops."
A former Auschwitz prisoner, Benjamin Jacobs, later recalled that Moll's straight blonde hair was cut short, and that in his chiseled face were set a pair of cold blue eyes, only one of which was real. When he spoke, only the live eye shifted, and there seemed to be no real feeling in the heart beating beneath his bulging chest.
At Auschwitz, Moll first supervised an agricultural commando. Yitzhak Ganon, who worked in Moll's commando and survived the Holocaust, later recalled that Moll was particularly happy to persecute the prisoners and drive them to labor. He remembered once when a prisoner came into a hot house and picked some onion leaves.
Moll noticed, summoned the prisoner, took him to a barrel with fermenting human fertilizer, put him in head down, then took him out and told the other prisoners to move him to a nearby water pool. The prisoner did not report for work the next day; it was clear that he had died.
Ganon also described how Moll was eager to tire the prisoners down and crack the whip all the time. On one cold day, Moll asked the prisoners if they were cold, and everyone said yes. Moll then ordered a prisoner to run circles around the unit while the SS man guarding them fired single shots at the runner. Some 10 prisoners were shot dead on the spot that way.
Thanks to his drive and toughness, in June 1942 Moll became the leader of the notorious penal company, to which prisoners were assigned for various reasons, including escape attempts, contact with civilians, or the illegal possession of food, money, and additional clothing. Assignment to the penal company in the infamous Block 11 lasted from one month to one year, and prisoners were completely isolated, had to perform the hardest labor, and were continually beaten by SS men and prisoner functionaries.
The Auschwitz subcamp Birkenau, which was also a killing center and played a central role in the German effort to kill the Jews of Europe, started functioning on March 1, 1942. At Birkenau, Moll devoted himself primarily to the killing of people. Jewish deportees arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau immediately underwent selection.
The selection procedure was carried out on the ramps. Families were divided after leaving the train cars, and all the people were lined up in two columns: men and older boys in one, women and children of both sexes in the other. They were then led to camp doctors and other camp functionaries conducting selection, who judged them on sight and sometimes elicited a brief declaration as to age and occupation before deciding whether they would live or die.
Hendrik Mandelbaum, who survived Auschwitz, later recalled that people believed it was indeed a bath, especially if it was presented as such during the journey or after arrival. The latter was the specialty of SS officer Otto Moll, who would give speeches and tell people that they had come to perform well-paid work and that although they had left valuable property behind, they would be able to settle down and earn new fortunes.
He instructed them to undress, saying they would receive fresh clothes because they were going to a place where cleanliness must be maintained, and it was necessary to prevent the spread of disease. The people, easily fooled, believed all that he said and proceeded to take off their clothing.
Entering the fake bath, they were not allowed to take any valuables, only towels and soap. The Germans told them that all the valuables left in the changing room would be given back. When the gas chamber was full and the doors tightly shut, Zyklon B was poured in, causing people to suffocate.
Because the transports included people who were elderly, sick, and handicapped, a fake Red Cross ambulance would drive around with a crew of two SS men in order to deceive the prisoners. The sick would be put in the ambulance and thereafter taken to be gassed. The victims were dead within 20 minutes.
Jan Kremer, the SS doctor who oversaw the gassings, testified that the shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through the opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives. On one occasion, a truck full of prisoners was being driven to a gas chamber but turned so suddenly that a woman's child, about 3 years old, fell out.
Moll, who was driving behind the truck, took the child by the neck and then by the leg and smashed his head against a guardhouse wall, killing him on the spot. Moll then drove up to the truck and threw the child's lifeless corpse to his mother.
For his merits in killing innocent men, women, and children, Hitler decorated Moll with the War Merit Cross First Class with Swords on April 20, 1943. This casts a significant light on his importance in the extermination of Jews. In addition to him, only commandant Höss and Josef Klehr, head of the Auschwitz disinfection commando, were decorated with this medal.
From September 1943 to May 1944, Moll was the first commandant of the Gleiwitz I and Gleiwitz II subcamps. The prisoners worked repairing damaged sides of cars in the machine shop and smithy and building roads into a nearby air strip. From late summer 1944 they were taken out to work on 12-hour shifts.
Samuel Stenger, who during the German occupation of Poland lost his whole family of 13 people, including his wife and child, recalled that German foremen who supervised work in the repair shops would report prisoners to the camp authorities for the most trivial offenses, such as trying to get warm by the radiator or eating scraps found somewhere. Based on these reports, Moll organized the punishment of flogging every Sunday at noon.
The floggings were administered on two special tables built for the purpose and carried out by designated prisoner functionaries or SS men. The usual punishment was 50 lashes, and Moll personally passed the sentences.
Stenger continued that Moll would personally shoot prisoners for the most trivial offenses. He once caught Stenger boiling potatoes that had been given to him at the repair shop. Moll assumed he had stolen them from the camp warehouse and did not believe his explanations. He beat him up, knocked him around, set the dog on him, and then told him to run for freedom, pointing to the wired fence around the camp.
When Stenger refused, Moll threatened him with a revolver. Having no choice, Stenger ran up to the wire and started climbing. Four shots were immediately fired from the guard tower, but none hit him. At almost the exact same moment, Moll's deputy drove by. He supervised the work in the repair shops and knew Stenger was a hardworking man, and he pleaded with Moll on his behalf, saving him from death.
Such incidents were very frequent. The day before Stenger's incident, Moll shot two of his friends from Kraków in the same manner. Prisoners who for some reason had no other assignment were consigned by Moll to the pointless carrying of stones from a nearby slag heap to the camp and back again. Almost 100 Gleiwitz I prisoners died as a result of mistreatment, hunger, and backbreaking labor.
In May 1944, Moll returned to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was appointed director of all crematoria by commandant Rudolf Höss. During this period, the extermination of Hungarian Jews was to take place. Moll was aware that the plan to burn 10,000 to 15,000 corpses per day would overwhelm the crematoria ovens.
Just before the arrival of the Hungarian transports, Moll ordered fire pits to be dug alongside the crematoria, provided with a gutter system of his own design. People from the incoming transports were to be shot and then burned in these fire pits. In this way, fat from the burning corpses would be drained off, collected by inmates with buckets, and tipped into the flames to burn.
Moll often strolled around the crowds scheduled for gassing, observed them undressing, and led small children away from their mothers with sweets in order to throw them outside into the boiling fat of the fire pits. On a few occasions he was seen picking children up by their hair and holding them suspended while he shot them.
When there were so many incoming transports that the gas chambers and crematoria were incapable of containing all the new arrivals, the fire pits to burn corpses were used. The SS people were generally shot one at a time, often by Moll himself or by other SS men, especially Erich Mussfeld.
When some people asked Moll to spare their lives, he replied that an order is an order and then killed them without any remorse. The Jews were shot in the back of the head and dropped into the fire. It sometimes happened that prisoners put up a fight or children cried. As a punishment, Moll would throw them into the burning pits alive.
Moll often led attractive Jewish women to the edge of the fire pits to enjoy their fear. He would whisper lewd words into their ears, then shoot them in the back of the head and drop them into the fire. Another of Moll's specialties was setting his dog on naked women.
The dog would bound toward them in a rage, chasing them toward the fire pits while biting and snapping at their legs and buttocks. Moll would then shoot the women in the stomach so that they would fall over, and he would watch them burn alive.
The fire pits were also used for smaller groups of victims consisting of up to 200 people. The reason was that using Zyklon B gas for such a small number was considered uneconomical and therefore wasteful. As a result, the Germans drove Hungarian children as well as the sick, old, and disabled by truck to the fire pits, where Moll and his colleagues, instructed to shoot them by hand or throw them alive into the flames, were waiting.
During eight weeks, from May 15 to July 9, 1944, Hungarian Jewish officials under the guidance of German SS officials deported around 424,000 Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where upon arrival and after selection SS functionaries killed the majority of them in gas chambers.
After the war, Holocaust survivor Hendrik Tabber recalled that Moll would take gold items out of the box where valuables stolen from people from transports were stored and take them for himself in his briefcase. From the things left by the gassed people he took furs and lots of food, especially fats. With a smile on his face he would say to the SS men around him that one should store up on food supplies because lean times would come someday.
As the head of all crematoria, Moll also directed the work of the Jewish Sonderkommando, a unit of camp prisoners forced to help with the disposal of gas chamber victims. Those who refused to do the terrible work of the Sonderkommando, Moll would personally throw alive into the burning furnaces.
The prisoners did not consider him a human and would call him "Sheta," which meant pig butcher. One Holocaust survivor later testified that Moll was called a pig butcher because he was not a human being but a butcher who threw children alive into the fire.
On one occasion, when he found a gold ring and watch in the possession of one of the members of the Jewish Sonderkommando, he poured petrol over him and put him into a cold furnace. The prisoner's name was Lab, and he was 20 years old.
The Auschwitz survivor Hendrik Tabber later recalled what followed. Underneath there was an ash pit where petrol was poured and flames went up to the retort in which Lab was locked. After a few minutes the furnace was opened and Lab, covered in burns, came out running. He was then ordered to run around the crematorium yard and shout that he was a thief. Then he was told to climb the crematorium barbed wire fence, which was not electrified by day. When he got to the top of the fence, Moll shot him dead.
Moll was also known for being an excellent marksman, and when he felt that the prisoners from the Sonderkommando were not working properly, he would shoot them from considerable distances. One of the very few survivors of the Sonderkommando, a Slovak prisoner named Philip Müller, described Moll's atrocities in the greatest detail.
Among other things, Müller reported on the sadistic death torture of "frog swimming" practiced by Moll. Moll chased selected prisoners into one of the extinguishing ponds next to the crematoria and forced them at gunpoint to swim there croaking constantly until they died of exhaustion.
Müller also recalled how Moll had invented camp games such as "brick bashing," in which two groups of prisoners had to smash as many bricks as possible for a certain amount of time, and the losing team was then shot on the spot by Moll. Among Moll's many sadistic specialties also belonged beating people with clubs and iron bars or throwing them against electric fences.
After the end of the extermination of the Hungarian Jews, Moll returned to the position of head of the Gleiwitz I subcamp. In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps.
SS units forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. These forced marches of concentration camp prisoners became known as death marches. The prisoners had to march over long distances under guard and in extremely harsh conditions, suffering from the cold weather, starvation, and exposure.
Moll led one such death march, and in February 1945 he arrived in Kaufering, the common name of a system of 11 subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp system. The prisoners deported to each of the 11 subcamps had to construct the accommodation themselves. The resulting huts, partially buried for camouflage from aerial reconnaissance, were completely inadequate for the weather conditions.
Rain and snow leaked through the earthen roofs, and vermin infested the huts. Prisoners had to sleep on straw spread on the floor. What little food the prisoners did have was taken by the SS guards, and those who were sick were fed even less. There were even incidents of cannibalism, and some prisoners were so desperate to escape their horrible reality that they tried to commit suicide by throwing themselves into the electrical fencing at Kaufering number two.
Moll was a camp leader responsible for the bedding, feeding, and clothing of prisoners, as well as sanitary conditions, labor commitments, and the transfer of sick prisoners. However, he abused and killed prisoners as well as willfully neglecting their care.
When three prisoners performing labor one day in March 1945 were preparing to cook some potatoes, Moll took a stick and beat two of them. He said to the third, "You young pig, you were cooking potatoes too. I'll show you." He then beat the third prisoner so severely that he broke the stick, and the beaten prisoner spent two weeks in the hospital.
When two passersby stopped and saw how Moll had been beating the prisoner, he ran out and said they should be glad that the Jews are punished. On another occasion in April 1945, Moll posted a Russian with a board and then beat him over the head with a rock until he fell to the ground. The dead Russian was then carried away on a stretcher out into the woods. At another time in February 1945, Moll struck a woman with a stick many times.
The subcamps of Kaufering were liberated between April 24 and 27, 1945, by the 7th United States Army. To prevent the liberation of the surviving inmates, Otto Moll had forced prisoners on a death march to the Dachau concentration camp. A transport that Moll accompanied left Kaufering camp number two on April 25 or 26, 1945.
There were about 150 prisoners in the transport, and Moll shot 26 of them who had collapsed due to exhaustion. Several of these were Russians and Poles. On April 29, 1945, Moll arrived at Dachau and left the following day with a formation of SS personnel marching in the direction of Tyrol. The formation soon dissolved, and he surrendered to the Americans on May 3 or 4, 1945, near Bad Tölz.
Finally, Otto Moll had to face justice and pay for his crimes. From November 15, 1945, he was tried at the first Dachau trial, held within the compound of the former Dachau concentration camp. During the trial, Moll lied, claiming that there was no shooting or mistreatment during the death march he led from Kaufering to Dachau.
He also claimed that the prisoners left Kaufering with sufficient provisions for two days and that he personally obtained additional food for half a day from Dachau. In reality, the prisoners got no food at all. Moll's crimes at Auschwitz were not part of the indictment, and he was never prosecuted for them. When asked about his stay at Auschwitz, Moll claimed that he had served there only as a gardener and never had contact with the prisoners.
On December 13, 1945, the US Military Tribunal found Otto Moll guilty of fatally shooting 26 prisoners who had collapsed from exhaustion during the death march from Kaufering, and sentenced him to death by hanging. On May 28, 1946, Otto Moll, then 31 years old, was executed in the courtyard of Landsberg prison. There were no tears shed for Otto Moll.