The Execution Of The Cyclops Of Birkenau

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]On the 28th of May 1946, one of the worst war criminals of the Second World War was led out onto the gallows inside of an American-controlled prison.

[00:00:10]There were few tears ever wept for Otto Moll as he climbed the steps onto the wooden platform.

[00:00:16]The executioner placed a noose around his neck and then shoved him over the trapdoor.

[00:00:21]Quickly, the trap was released and Moll plunged a significant distance and he was instantly executed.

[00:00:28]Now, Otto Moll has been described by a number of names during the Second World War, including Cyclops and also the Butcher of Birkenau.

[00:00:37]He was a man who personally was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people within Auschwitz and he even threw people into the burning cremation pits alive and also carried out executions by shooting and tortured many himself.

[00:00:52]Inside of the Nazi system, Moll was one man who became a monster and he was deranged, a man guilty of the worst cruelties in history.

[00:01:01]But what happened specifically to him and how did he become a monster?

[00:01:08]Otto Moll was born in 1915 and as a young man, he trained as a gardener.

[00:01:13]There was little to suggest that he had a future becoming a monster, but he joined the SS on the 1st of May 1935 when he was 20.

[00:01:22]Inside of the paramilitary organization, he performed in his battalion's orchestra. However, in January 1937, he was involved in a very significant accident as a truck he was traveling in crashed. Moll suffered a very serious head injury and some historians have claimed that this accident turned him into a beast and a brute. They've suggested that he suffered from a frontal lobe syndrome, brain damage that turned him into a complete sadist.

[00:01:51]After his injury, he became more psychotic.

[00:01:54]One witness claimed that, I quote, "His straight blond hair was cut short and his chiseled face were set a pair of cold blue eyes. Only one of them was real, for he had lost the other fighting in France.

[00:02:07]When he spoke, only the live eye shifted. There seemed to be no real feeling in the heart beating beneath his bulging chest."

[00:02:15]There is no excusing his later actions and crimes.

[00:02:19]One historian has suggested that within the Third Reich and the Nazi system, Moll's mental and physical illnesses were exploited and that the regime allowed him to become a truly evil perpetrator.

[00:02:31]He lost his eyesight in one eye as mentioned, but then after recovering somewhat, he joined the SS Death's Head units.

[00:02:38]These were the Nazis responsible for administering the concentration camps.

[00:02:43]He began overseeing small groups of workers and moved from different sites to arrive inside of Auschwitz in 1941.

[00:02:50]In his first job, he was placed in overseeing the groups of prisoners who were actually responsible for digging mass graves.

[00:02:57]He served at Auschwitz for 3 and 1/2 years and rose to significant positions in which he controlled even more prisoners.

[00:03:05]In fact, his work in being a barbaric beast even attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler and alongside commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss, Otto Moll was personally decorated with the War Merit Cross first class with swords by Hitler himself.

[00:03:21]Whilst at Auschwitz, specifically Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Moll was responsible for killing hundreds of inmates himself with his bare hands and he was also involved in seeing hundreds of thousands being sent to the gas chambers as he actually served as the chief of the crematorium and extermination zone at Birkenau.

[00:03:39]He would tell his staff, "Befehl ist Befehl." An order is an order.

[00:03:44]He was even involved in ramping up operations at Birkenau to make them capable of killing even more people.

[00:03:51]One of the Sonderkommando, groups of prisoners who were forced to clean up after the killings later said about Moll that, I quote, "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."

[00:04:17]Moll ordered a naked woman to sit on the corpses near a pit while he shot at prisoners and then threw them to the burning pit, ordering the woman to jump and sing.

[00:04:26]Of course, she did so in hopes of saving her life.

[00:04:30]After executing everybody, Moll shot this woman and she was then incinerated.

[00:04:35]On another occasion, Moll found a few rings and a watch on a boy from our group.

[00:04:40]He halted him at the crematory, had him thrown into the furnace, started a fire using paper, then got him out, hanged him by his arms, tortured and interrogated him to find out where he'd gotten the items found on him.

[00:04:53]Of course, he told them everything, identified the prisoner who had given the items to him, and then he was set on fire from the waist down, and was ordered to run towards the wires where he was executed.

[00:05:05]There were further accounts of Otto Moll's cruelty.

[00:05:08]Another former prisoner claimed, I quote, "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.

[00:05:21]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 cremations.

[00:05:33]It is he who organized the large-scale exterminations of people arriving in these convoys.

[00:05:38]Moll repeated the same thing in his speeches to new arrivals. There were so many convoys that sometimes it happened that the The chambers were incapable of containing all the new arrivals.

[00:05:48]The excess people were generally shot one at a time often by Moll himself.

[00:05:54]On several occasions, Moll threw people into the flaming pits alive.

[00:05:58]He also practiced shooting people from a distance. He ill-treated and beat Sonderkommando prisoners treating them like animals.

[00:06:06]It was also claimed that Moll was so zealous and crazy that he personally took part in the cremations.

[00:06:13]Once he was overheard saying that if I command ordered him to cremate his family, he'd do it.

[00:06:19]Moll revealed his sadism at times when he circulated amongst mothers who were about to be gassed and chatted with a boy whom they carried. He did it with a chuckle. He had hugged the boy, gave him some candy, and tried to talk the mother into handing the boy over.

[00:06:33]He'd then take the kid to the pit and throw him into the fire alive.

[00:06:38]All these accounts show you what sort of a beast he truly was.

[00:06:42]He would shoot women purposely to injure them so he could then see them burn to death in the pits.

[00:06:48]He also set his dogs on the prisoners, threw them against electric fences, and also set fire to the prisoners after dousing them in fuel.

[00:06:56]He ended the Second World War overseeing an execution squad who were responsible for executing 3,000 prisoners inside the camps who were viewed as being dangerous.

[00:07:06]He was also captured at Dachau concentration camp after forcing inmates on a death march. He continued being brutal and suggested that Dachau should be blown up to further prisoners.

[00:07:18]The Americans who captured Dachau and Otto Moll placed him on trial, and he was only ever tried for the actions he committed within Dachau.

[00:07:27]This was enough though to sentence him to death as he was found guilty of executing prisoners on the death march.

[00:07:33]But the actions he committed inside of Auschwitz would never come out until after his execution.

[00:07:39]But Otto Moll inside of a prison never repented or apologized for his crimes.

[00:07:44]He denied what he had truly done.

[00:07:47]On the 28th of May, 1946, he was collected from his prison cell inside of Landsberg prison and he was taken out of the death row block and into the courtyard where a number of gallows could be found.

[00:07:59]These structures were where hundreds of Nazi war criminals would be executed upon.

[00:08:04]Moll was helped up onto the platform of the gallows and military policemen had secured his arms behind his back already.

[00:08:11]But then the executioner took possession of Moll and also made sure his legs were secure.

[00:08:16]He placed a black cap over his head so he couldn't see his final moments. One final act of mercy for a man who deserved no such.

[00:08:25]The executioner then shuffled him over the trapdoor and quickly then released the drop.

[00:08:31]Moll plunged deep down into the gallows platform and his neck was snapped.

[00:08:35]He was left hanging for some time before his body was retrieved and it was then placed inside of a coffin.

[00:08:42]Otto Moll was one of the most disturbing men who worked inside of the concentration camps during World War II.

[00:08:48]He personally with his own hands executed and slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands, of inmates in horrific and barbaric ways.

[00:08:56]He was described by fellow SS men as one of the most sadistic and evil figures inside of Auschwitz and for his crimes he paid the ultimate price.

[00:09:05]Thanks for watching.

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