The next day on the morning of 10th December 1942, once all the kommandos had gone to work MOLL (then Unterscharführer/ Sargeant, later to be Hauptscharführer/ Staff Sergeant and head of the Birkenau Krematorien) arrived at Block 14 and gave the order: “Sonderkommando 'raus'” [get outside]. It was thus that we learnt that we were detailed, not to the rubber factory (Buna) but to a Sonderkommando and we did not realise what this was for nobody had ever given us the slightest explanation of it. On Moll’s order, we went out of the block and were divided into two groups of 100 men each to be marched out of the camp by the SS.

We were taken into a forest where there was a cottage covered with thatch, its windows bricked in. On the door leading to the interior of the cottage was a metal plate with the inscription “Hochspannung Lebensgefahr / High tension danger” [Document 3: Figure 2]. Thirty or forty meters from this cottage there were two wooden huts (huts 1 and 2 in Drawing 1). On the other side of the cottage there were four pits 30 meters long, 7 meters wide and 3 meters deep (above in drawing 1), their edges black with smoke. We were lined up in front of the house. Moll arrived and told us we would work here at burning old and lousy people, that we would be given something something to eat and in the evening we would be taken back to the camp. He added that those who did not accept the work would be beaten and have the dogs set on them. The SS who escorted us were accompanied by dogs. Then he split us into a number of groups. I myself and eleven others were detailed as we learnt later, to remove the bodies from this cottage. We were all given masks, and led to the door of the cottage. When Moll opened the door, we saw that the door, we saw that the cottage was full of naked corpses of both sexes and of all ages. Moll ordered us to move these corpses from the cottage to the yard, in front of the door. We started work with four men carrying one body. This annoyed Moll. He rolled up his sleeves and threw a body into the yard When, despite this example, we said we were incapable of doing that, he allowed us to carry them, two men to a body. Once the corpses were laid out in the yard. the dentist, assisted by an SS man, pulled out the teeth [Dragon forgets the removal of rings and jewels, unless these had been removed earlier], and the barber, also watched by an SS man, cut off the hair. Another group loaded the bodies onto wagons running on rails that led to the edge of the pits. These rails ran between two pits [Document 1: Drawing 1]. Still another group prepared the pit for burning the corpses. First of all, big logs were put in the bottom [Document 9, sketch by David Olère. The logs are on the right, along the wall of the undressing hut], then smaller and smaller wood, in criss cross fashion, and finally dry twigs. The following group threw the bodies into the pit. Once all the bodies had been brought from the cottage to the pit, Moll poured kerosene over them in the four corners of the pit and set fire to it by throwing in a burning rubber comb (roughly fringed piece of rubber). That is how the corpses were burnt. While Moll was starting the fire, we were in front of the cottage, (on the north west side) and could see what he was doing.

After having removed all the bodies from the cottage, we ware obliged to clean it thoroughly, washing the floor with water and spreading sawdust and whitewashing the walls. The interior of the cottage was divided into four parts by partition walls running across it [Document 2: Drawing 2], one of which could contain 1,200 naked people, the second 700 the third 400 the and the fourth 200 to 250.