New research has shed light on one of the most haunting and widely recognized photographs of the Holocaust known as “The Last Jew of Vinnytsia,” Ynet reported.

German historian Jürgen Matthäus, who carried out the research, revealed that the photo was not taken in Vinnitsa, Ukraine itself, as long believed, but in nearby Berditchev (Berdychiv) in July 1941. The black and white photo captures the moment before the execution of a Jewish man kneeling at the edge of a mass grave. Behind him stands an SS officer, pistol drawn, preparing to shoot him in the neck, while other SS soldiers and officers apathetically watch the scene. The Jews were forced to dig their own mass grave and a small mound of earth can be seen along with dozens of Jewish bodies already lying in the grave can be seen (in the full photo).

Although the photo has been published thousands of times in books, magazines, and online, no details were known about it until now, including the identities of the Nazi killer, Jewish victim, the precise location, nor even the date. Matthäus, who served as the head of research at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., until March of this year, has now uncovered most of these details.

His study revealed that the horrifying image was captured at a fortress near Berditchev in the early afternoon of July 28, 1941—three weeks after the Germans captured the city and just days before its Jews were forced into a ghetto. The Nazi executioner was Jakobus Onnen, born in 1906 in a small village near the Dutch border. Before the war, he was a teacher of English, French, and physical education. He joined the Nazi SA, the Nazi paramilitary organization, two years before Hitler rose to power and later enlisted in the SS.

Deployed to Poland at the outbreak of World War II, Onnen was already actively involved in mass killings of Jews a month before the infamous photo was taken. His Einsatzgruppe D unit, numbering about 700 men, was part of the mobile death squads tasked with “cleansing the Reich’s rear areas of ‘dangerous elements’” while the main army advanced into the Soviet Union.

Onnen’s unit was notorious for its “efficiency”: by the fall of 1942 it had murdered over 100,000 civilians—men, women, and children, the vast majority of whom were Jews. Hitler himself visited Berdychiv in early August 1941 to commend the unit’s “efficiency.” By the time the Red Army liberated the city in January 1944, only 15 Jews out of the pre-war population of 20,000 remained alive. Onnen was killed in combat in 1943.

The photo first gained international attention during the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, when it was presented by Ed Moss, a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor who had emigrated to Chicago. He had obtained the image from an American soldier in Munich in 1945. Over the years, it became known by different titles, including “The Last Jew of Vinnitsa” and “Seventy Jews and One Aryan.”

Matthäus was not able to determine who took the photo but believes it was likely a Wehrmacht soldier.

Matthäus discovered a negative of the photograph in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archives, inside the diary of Austrian Wehrmacht officer Walter Materna. A bank clerk by profession and a a World War I veteran, Materna wrote in great detail about the July 28, 1941, massacre, describing the mass executions and the Nazi machine gunner firing into the bodies that fell into the pit to ensure their deaths.

Materna also wrote about the Ukrainian collaborators who informed the Nazis about Jews’ whereabouts, rushed from their homes with hoes so that the mass graves could be dug quicker, and left their dinners on their tables to run to the scene when they heard that another mass grave was being prepared. Materna coldly noted that 180 Jews were executed that day in the fortress, compared to 300 the day before—as though describing routine logistical events.

Materna wrote on the back of the negative, “July 28, 1941. Execution of Jews by the SS at the Berdychiv fortress.”

It should be noted that according to other official accounts of the massacre, witnesses stated that Ukrainian auxiliary police aided the 25-member shooting squad in corralling Jews into the ghetto, policing it, and killing those who attempted to escape. One witness to a mass killing of Jews in Berdychiv said, “They had to wear their festivity dresses. Then their clothes and valuables were taken. The pits were dug and filled in by war prisoners who were executed shortly after.”

The Nazis likely killed 20,000 to 30,000 Jews in Berdychiv, but a 1973 Ukrainian-language article about the history of Berdychiv says, “The Gestapo killed 38,536 people.”

The Nazi executioner’s identity was finally revealed after Matthäus published part of his initial findings in the German newspaper Die Welt in 2023. A reader who suspected that the executioner in the photo was his wife’s uncle contacted him, providing new information and family photos. The new evidence and photos were analyzed by a private research firm using artificial intelligence, which confirmed with 99% certainty that the officer in the photograph was indeed Jakobus Onnen.

The identity of the Jewish victim in the photo remains unknown.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)