April 2026

Report dated November 7, 1943 Sonderkommando 1005 Kaunas
Contemporary Source

1943-11-07 / Kaunas Security Police Report: “Jewish bones are being burned” at Fort IX

A report dated November 7, 1943, written by a employee attached to the Commander of the Security Police in Kaunas states that the local criminal police had determined that “nighttime fires at Fort IX”were caused by the burning of “Jewish bones”. This activity correspomds with the operations of Sonderkommando 1005 at Kaunas, a program led by Paul Blobel, which was tasked with exhuming mass graves and destroying evidence of Nazi atrocities across Eastern Europe.

Interrogation protocol dated April 16, 1946
Post-War Testimony

1946-04-16 / Joint Interrogation of Otto Moll and Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höß

Joint interrogation of Otto Moll and Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß on April 16, 1946. Höss stated that it “was the responsibility of the subordinates, like Moll, to see that the people actually got into the gas chambers under the doctors and then to see that their bodies were burned” and that”those that were too weak to be moved to the gas chamber, or who could not be moved for some other reason, were shot thru the neck by him”. Moll testified that “we put between 30,000 and 40,000 people in those mass graves” of the Bunker extermination sites in 1942, whereas Höss gave a higher figure, “the people buried in the two big mass graves of the so-called dugouts: one and two, amounted to 106,000 or 107,000 people”.

Post-War Testimony

1945-11-03 / Otto Moll’s 1945 Dachau Statement

Sworn statement of Otto Moll, taken at Dachau by U.S. investigators on November 3, 1945. At the center of his account is his role in the Kaufering subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp system during the final months of the war (end phase atrocities). On his earlier service at Auschwitz, Moll made a notably brief and misleading claim that “From 1941 until January 1945, I likewise managed a gardening unit of the Economic and Administrative Main Office in the Auschwitz concentration camp, in which concentration camp prisoners were also employed.”

Becker Letter dated May 16, 1942 on gas vans
Contemporary Source

1942-05-16 / The Becker Letter on Gas Vans: “The gassing is generally not carried out correctly … the persons being executed die of suffocation”

On May 16, 1942, SS-Untersturmführer August Becker submitted a report to the head of RSHA department II D, Walther Rauff, on his inspection of the operation of the homicidal gas vans at the Einsatzgruppen. Becker noted that the vehicles had become widely recognized, “that not only the authorities but also the civilian population referred to them as ‘death vehicles’ as soon as one of them appeared”. He also observed “various units have their own men unload the vehicle after the gassing,” and warned the commanders of “what enormous psychological and physical harm this work can cause to the men.” He states that “the gassing is generally not carried out correctly,” as drivers “consistently apply full throttle,” with the result that victims “die of suffocation.”

Interrogation protocol dated April 15, 1946 Otto Moll Auschwitz testimony
Post-War Testimony

1946-04-15 / Testimony of Otto Moll, Head of Auschwitz Crematoria

Interrogation of notorious Auschwitz perpetrator Otto Moll, conducted on April 15–16, 1946. In his statements to U.S. prosecutors at Nuremberg, Moll acknowledged supervising the cremation of bodies at Birkenau in the Summer of 1944. He described the arrival of transports from Hungary, the selection process carried out by SS doctors, and the transfer of those deemed unfit for work to the crematoria. At the same time, he maintained that responsibility for the killings themselves rested with doctors and higher-ranking SS officials. He denied committing any atrocities.

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