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Among most disturbing images depicting the Nazi era shows a glasses-wearing German officer aiming a firearm at the skull of a subdued person crouching in a suit before a ditch containing corpses. SS units stand around the site.

The photograph taken in present-day Ukraine was long known, mistakenly, as The Last Jew in Vinnitsa, and stayed unidentified for decades.

A German historian based in the United States has spent years carefully piecing together the puzzle pieces and, using artificial intelligence, claims he has identified the perpetrator.

Research Discoveries

Based on evidence newly issued in a respected research publication, the German unit executed the massacre on July 28, 1941, most likely in the early afternoon, in the citadel of the town of Berdychiv.

This location served as for centuries a prosperous heart of Jewish life. Situated 150km to the southwest of Kyiv and about 90 kilometers north of what is referred to in the English language as Vinnytsia city, which had once believed incorrectly to be the location of the killings.

SS Death Squad

This particular SS unit, among multiple task forces deployed in the newly occupied USSR, had been tasked with removing the region of Jewish residents and resistance fighters just ahead of a tour by Adolf Hitler.

Included in this unit was Onnen, a French, English and gym teacher who was born in 1906 in the rural community of Tichelwarf, Germany, not far from the border with the Netherlands.

Research Methodology

Matthäus outlined an “incremental process” of archival research in historical documents, fortuitous discoveries, feedback from experts and the pioneering assistance of volunteers from an open-source journalism group.

“This identification, from everything I hear from the technical experts, is unusually high in terms of the likelihood the algorithm produces,” the historian commented.

Initial investigation released recently enabled the historian to reveal the specific day, location and military group responsible in the mass shooting, leading to news reports in the German press.

Critical Lead

Someone contacted the researcher and stated that, based on letters from the wartime years in his family records, the shooter could be his family member, Jakobus Onnen.

Descendants had destroyed letters from the eastern front from Onnen in the nineties. But they retained photographs of him, which the volunteers were able to use for an computer-assisted comparison.

“Technology specialists inform me that because it's a old photograph makes it more difficult to obtain a very high probability” as typically produced in modern criminal investigations, Matthäus noted.

But its strong likeness, alongside a substantial contextual proof, lent him credibility to release his conclusions.

Technology in Academia

“Computer-based methods in the academic research have massively increased in utilization, but it’s typically for the processing of bulk information, rarely for individual case studies,” he stated about the possibilities for the employment of machine learning in his field.

“This is definitely not a magic wand – this is one tool among many. Human judgment remains key.”

The Suspect

The identified man, who had enlisted in the National Socialist party ahead of the Nazi seizure of power, hailed from an well-to-do background and in his youth enjoyed “journeying, studying languages”, Matthäus noted.

“Subsequently comes his assignment in the occupied territories and obviously this is his location,” he commented. “Personal drive is one of the most difficult questions to answer. The reason I suspect why he is positioning himself there, the way he depicts himself – I believe is meant to impress.”

The soldier was not advanced past a relatively lowly rank and was died in combat in the summer of 1943.

“Participating in a murder like that was taken for granted and wouldn't earn you special rewards in these killing squads,” he explained.

Lost Evidence

He regretted that the letters the suspect sent home from the front which might have offered insight on to his beliefs were destroyed. But he noted that the family member who had stepped up about his suspected identity had read them years earlier and described them as “banal”.

Ongoing Research

Matthäus previously served as head of the scholarly division of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the US capital, where he had served since the mid-nineties.

A recent volume by him, "Framed Violence", examines the personal albums compiled by Germans on the Soviet territory during the WWII.

He stated it was “fairly certain” the image of the Berdychiv massacre, of which there are multiple copies, was shot by a other unit member and mentioned that such snapshots were seen as “souvenirs” from massacres of civilians.

Search for the Victim

From approximately 20,000 Jewish people in this location on the Nazi invasion in 1941, just 15 individuals survived in 1944, according to historical records.

“These killings in this fashion went on right up to the end of the German occupation in the east,” he commented.

“In my opinion this image should be equally significant as the photograph of the entrance in the Auschwitz camp, because it {sh