German historian Jürgen Matthäus has identified the SS officer in the infamous 1941 photograph known as “The Last Jew in Vinnitsa.” The image, shown at Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial, depicts a kneeling Jewish man moments before execution beside a mass grave in Berdychiv, Ukraine.
Matthäus’ research confirms the shooter as Jakobus Oehnen, a German schoolteacher turned SS officer. The photo was taken on July 28, 1941, just weeks after the Nazi occupation, during mass killings of Jews prior to the establishment of the Berdychiv ghetto.
Oehnen, born in 1906, had joined the SS in the early 1930s and participated in mobile killing operations responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 civilians in Ukraine. He was killed in combat in 1943.
The photograph shows at least 20 German soldiers observing the execution. A Wehrmacht officer’s diary and a photo negative discovered in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archives provided key evidence confirming the shooter’s identity.
The identity of the Jewish victim remains unknown.
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