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The article takes another look at a classic document in the historiography of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex: the diary that SS doctor Johann Paul Kremer kept during his stay at the camp, between early September and the end of November 1942. After examining the judicial, historiographical and negationist purposes for which this document has been exploited, we demonstrate the interest of cross-referencing this Nazi source, contemporaneous with the camp’s industrial-scale implementation of murder, with individual data regarding the Jewish victims, made available by the International Tracing Service (ITS). This diary is one of the very few sources allowing us to establish a precise and accurate date not for the disappearance, but in fact for the murder of thousands of deportees from Western Europe between the summer and winter of 1942.