A man in a long coat, with a full head of hair and sunken cheeks, knelt at the edge of a mass grave, resigned to his fate.
Dozens of bodies beneath him and the gunman pointing a pistol at the back of his head leaves no room for doubt – he knows his life is about to end. The identity of the victim remains a mystery, but the culprit has been located with 99% certainty.
The gunman in the photo, who is striking a “casual pose” showing “demonstrative indifference” and “procedural matter-of-factness”, is likely Nazi war criminal Jakobus Onnen, and the photo was probably a Nazi trophy, explains German historian Jürgen Mattheus.
The latest findings of the former head of the research department of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum were recently revealed Historical Science Journal (or “Journal of Historical Science”), published by Metropole Verlag.
“This is a huge step forward in getting to the historical reality of the Holocaust. These are moments where – if I can generalize – where historians are really thinking, ‘Aha, here I have really pushed the limits of what we know,'” Matthews told DW.
This photo became one of the most famous images of the Holocaust, titled “The Last Jews in Vinnitsa.” It first attracted attention in Israel in 1961 during the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. However, little was known about the image until now, and what was known turned out to be wrong in retrospect.
photo history
According to the United Press International (UPI) news agency, which distributed the photo at the time, it was supplied by Holocaust survivor Al Moss of Chicago. He reportedly found the photograph in Munich shortly after its liberation by American troops in 1945 and handed it over to UPI.
But the image was mislabeled for a long time. Only in 2023 did Mattheus discover that the photograph was not taken between 1941 and 1943 in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, as originally thought, but in Berdychiv, about 150 km from Kiev.
The mistake was discovered by a stroke of suddenness. A few years ago, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC received the war diaries of Austrian Wehrmacht soldier Walter Materna, who was stationed in Berdychiv in 1941.
He also included a print of this photograph, but of much better quality than the previously known copy. On the back was written, “Late July 1941. Execution of Jews by the SS in the Citadel of Berdichev. July 28, 1941.”
A diary entry of Materna on the same date, in which she describes the murder of hundreds of Jewish people in a single pit in the Berdychiv Citadel, reinforced the theory that the crime scene was Berdychiv, not Vinnytsia.
Matthews published the results of his research on Materna’s diaries in the journal “Holocaust and Genocide Studies” in late 2023. german daily World Gave information on the topic.
Successful use of hive mind
Jürgen Matthäus then received several tips from readers who claimed to identify the culprit. One of them came from a retired high school teacher, who wrote that the “terrible image” had played a role in his family for decades “because it shows an SS member who resembles my wife’s uncle, her mother’s brother … an uncle who was ‘on site’ as a member of Einsatzgruppe C during the period in question,” Matthews wrote in the Journal of Historical Science.
This ‘uncle’ was Jacobus Onnen, born in 1906 into a middle-class family in the East Frisian village of Tichelwarf, near the Dutch border. Following in his late father’s footsteps, he studied French, English and sports in Göttingen to become a teacher. He later taught at the German colonial school in Witzenhausen.
In 1931, he joined the Sturmabteilung (or SA), a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party, and a year later he transferred to the SS, a type of elite police force under the Nazis, which had started out as Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguard. In early June 1941, he became part of Einsatzgruppe C, which murdered hundreds of thousands of Jewish people in Eastern Europe.
Matthaus says, “He joined the SA and then later the SS. His study time in Göttingen was clearly influenced by the Nazi student movement, which was very strong, especially in Göttingen. So there is Nazism here that you can see.”
‘AI was the icing on the cake’
Onnen was never investigated because he died in battle in August 1943. Furthermore, his sister had destroyed the collection of letters he had sent, eliminating the possibility of using them to reconstruct the events.
Despite such obstacles, AI experts came forward and managed to determine the identity of the killer using AI-based facial recognition software with a high level of certainty. The feat was achieved largely with the help of a high school teacher, who recognized his relative in the image and sent the photos for comparison.
Matthews says, “The more we collaborate across disciplinary divides, which is not a given, especially in the humanities, the better. It’s very collaborative…Holocaust studies exists only as an interdisciplinary field.” He said such collaboration could also include art historians, technical experts, musicologists, psychologists and political scientists.
victims remain unidentified
The shooter’s name and biographical details are now known. Yet the victim is unidentified – as is the case in many cases – even though his face is clearly visible in the photograph. This is not surprising, says Mattheus, because the Nazis deliberately did not list the names of those shot in Eastern Europe – unlike the case with deportations from Western Europe.
,Over time, there have been massive efforts to anonymize victims by identifying them by name. Who were these people? Much of this work was done by survivors who came forward and made identifications based on photographs or memoirs and testimony, such as at the Shoah Foundation at Yad Vashem and also at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington.,” explains Matthew.
Nevertheless, the historian remains “cautiously optimistic” that one day interdisciplinary collaboration, hive minds and AI will be able to identify the victim in this photo, further opening up many new opportunities for Holocaust research.
,If it is possible for this photo, it can also be possible for letters, diaries. I believe a lot depends on society’s willingness to adopt it, and not just the political class. But individuals and families must also cope” says Matthew.
The article was originally published in German.