A decades-old mystery surrounding the 1941 photograph long known as “The Last Jew in Vinnitsa”—showing a kneeling Jewish man moments before his execution by a German soldier—has been solved with the help of AI, according to a researcher.
The photo first surfaced during the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, when survivor Al Moss submitted it to demonstrate the cruelty of Nazi mass shootings. For years, the identities of both the shooter and the victim remained unknown.
According to new research by Jurgen Matthaus, former head of research at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the gunman has now been identified as Jakobus Onnen, a 34-year-old former teacher from northern Germany.
Matthaus published his preliminary findings last year, and a living relative of Onnen later provided family photos, which were then matched with 99% confidence using an AI facial recognition tool.
Matthaus’s findings, published in September 2025 in the German-language publication The Journal of Historical Studies, concluded that the photograph was taken during an Einsatzgruppe massacre in the Ukrainian city of Berdichev on July 28, 1941.
Onnen was an SS member who participated in mass executions under the Einsatzgruppe C as it followed the Wehrmacht into Soviet territory. He was killed in 1943.
The victim in the image remains unidentified.
