SS officer in infamous ‘Last Jew in Vinnitsa’ photo identif

The analysis, carried out by German historian Jürgen Matthäus, names the killer as Jakobus Oehnen, a German schoolteacher who became an SS officer who participated in mass executions of Jews in Berdychiv, Ukraine, in 1941.

The black-and-white photograph, first launched as proof in the course of the 1961 Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, is now documented for the primary time with confirmed particulars of the time, location, and perpetrator. The sufferer stays unidentified.

In accordance with Matthäus, the {photograph} was taken on July 28, 1941, at a fortress close to Berdychiv, some tens of miles from Vinnitsa, simply three weeks after town was occupied by the Nazis and days earlier than its Jews had been pressured right into a ghetto.

The picture captures the second an SS officer stands on the sting of a killing pit behind a kneeling Jewish man, holding a pistol aimed toward his neck, moments earlier than the execution. Within the background, at the very least 20 SS troopers and officers look on, expressionless.

The town of Berdychiv in Ukraine, a serious heart of Hasidic Judaism, had suffered violent pogroms by Russian forces after World Conflict I. After the Nazi occupation in July 1941, hundreds of Jews had been murdered by the Germans.

The picture’s stark energy lies within the visibility of the killers – their faces are clear, their presence is documented. No less than 20 SS troopers and officers seemed indifferently and peacefully, as in the event that they had been used to the sight.

A small sand mound seems within the foreground, comprised of the earth dug out by Jews pressured to excavate their very own mass grave. Dozens of our bodies already lie on the backside. The doomed man, kneeling on the fringe of the pit, stares into the gap, past the digicam.

Behind him, the SS officer wears a beret and glasses. His left hand rests behind his again inside his belt holster. His legs are set in a wonderfully balanced stance. His boots are polished to the knee. He seems like somebody who’s dressed for a celebration. His proper arm extends ahead with a pistol. In only a second he’ll shoot the Jew at the back of the neck and kill him.

This photograph has been revealed a whole bunch, if not hundreds, of occasions in books and magazines. But till now, none of its important particulars, i.e., the id of the shooter, the sufferer, the witnesses, the placement, or the precise date, had been verified.

Matthäus’ analysis seems in a current version of a historic science journal. Till March of this yr, he served as head of the analysis division of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. His work brings long-sought context to one of many Holocaust’s most horrible pictures.

In accordance with Matthäus, the {photograph} was taken in early afternoon of July 28, 1941, at a fortress close to Berdychiv, simply three weeks after town was occupied by the Nazis and days earlier than its Jews had been concentrated right into a ghetto. The shooter-killer is recognized as Jakobus Oehnen, born in 1906 in a small village close to the Dutch border, had been a instructor of English, French, and bodily schooling earlier than becoming a member of the SS.

Oehnen first joined the SA, the Nazi paramilitary group, two years earlier than the Nazi Social gathering got here to energy. A yr later, he enlisted within the SS. Instantly upon Nazi occupation, Oehnen was deployed in Poland, and based on the analysis, he had already participated within the homicide of Jews a month earlier than the photograph was taken.

Oehnen’s unit, numbering about 700 troopers, was a part of the SS cell killing squads tasked with “cleaning the Reich’s rear areas of harmful parts” whereas the German military superior into the Soviet Union.

By the autumn of 1942, his unit had murdered greater than 100,000 civilians, males, ladies and kids, most of them Jews. Adolf Hitler himself visited the area in early August 1941 to commend the troops for his or her effectivity. When the Pink Military liberated Berdychiv in January 1944, solely 15 Jews remained out of the 20,000 who had lived there earlier than the Nazi occupation. Oehnen was killed in fight in 1943.

The photograph gained world consideration in the course of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. It was launched by Ed Moss, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust and later immigrated to Chicago. He had acquired the photograph from an American soldier in Munich in 1945. Over time, it got here to be recognized by titles comparable to ‘The Final Jew in Vinnitsa’ and ‘Seventy Jews and One Aryan’.

Matthäus’s research doesn’t determine the photographer however suggests it was seemingly a Wehrmacht soldier. The historian launched his investigation after discovering a photograph unfavourable within the archives of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. It had been tucked contained in the wartime diary of Walter Materna, an Austrian Wehrmacht officer born in 1898.

Materna, a former financial institution clerk and World Conflict I veteran, offered an in depth account of the July 28, 1941, bloodbath. He described executions on the web site, together with a soldier firing into the mass grave with a machine gun to make sure the lifeless remained so.

He additionally documented the function of Ukrainian collaborators who knowledgeable on Jews, introduced shovels from their properties to hurry up the digging of mass graves, and even deserted their dinners upon listening to that one other grave was being ready.

In accordance with Materna’s writings, 180 Jews had been killed that day on the fortress, in contrast with 300 executed the day earlier than. He recorded these figures in stark, impersonal language, as if noting routine logistics.

Although a lot of his diary seems to echo tales informed by fellow officers, the extent of element suggests he might have witnessed the executions himself. On the again of the photograph unfavourable, he wrote: “July 28, 1941. Execution of Jews by the SS. Fortress Berdychiv.”

Parts of Matthäus’ analysis first appeared within the German newspaper Die Welt in 2023. A reader who suspected the person within the photograph was his spouse’s uncle contacted Matthäus with new proof and household pictures. A non-public investigator and analysis agency used synthetic intelligence to match the pictures and decided with 99 % certainty that the person within the photograph was Jakobus Oehnen.

The id of the Jewish man he murdered stays unknown.