Recently we’ve had a flurry of mainstream media articles about the famous Einsatzgruppen Photograph called (wrongly) ‘The Last Jew in Vinnitsa’. I have previously debunked this photograph as a probable forgery that first appears in 1957, has no real provenance - further the Al Moss story of acquiring the photograph in Munich via unspecified means in 1945 before selling it to ‘United Press International’ in 1961 makes no sense as it first appears in a German book in 1957 labelled as ‘The Execution of Poles’ [dated as occurring in 1940] not 1961 nor do we have the original Moss photograph as it has been ‘lost’ - and has so many decidedly odd things (like the presence of a single Reichsarbeitsdienst member, a single German musician in his dress uniform and a single panzer corps soldier) shown in it that it would normally be treated with extreme scepticism if it showed anything else other than the so-called ‘Holocaust’. (1)
This is because the German historian Jürgen Matthäus – who works for the ‘United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’ – has identified the German executioner ‘with 99 percent certainty’ as Jakobus Onnen. (2)
Now before we carry on lets remind ourselves of what the photograph looks so we can keep that in mind in this discussion:
I can accept Matthäus’ identification of Onnen as the executioner shown in the photograph – they look very similar, Onnen was part of Einsatzgruppe C and had the correct rank as the shooter in the photograph – but that really doesn’t matter a great deal, because there are so many problems with the photograph in just the provenance alone that it cannot be accepted to be potentially genuine until these are resolved.
This is showcased by the fact that Matthäus can’t even explain where the photograph comes from and blithely claims – rather idiotically because given his knowledge of the photograph he knows better – that ‘the photo was probably a Nazi trophy’. (3)
The problem of course is how can there be so many copies of a ‘Nazi trophy photo’ with the ‘Holocaust Survivor’ Al Moss having one that he allegedly acquired in 1945, Walter Materna having one in his diary (Matthäus is trying to claim this is the original) and an otherwise unknown third one kicking around – which we know because this photograph was originally claimed to be the execution of Poles in 1940 in a German book in 1957 and had it been the Materna copy with its inscription on the back would have corrected the tag-line as to the location and date of the photograph – (4) then it means that it cannot be such.
Especially if as Matthäus claims the photograph is the original, because how then can Materna have it, Moss have it and someone else have it; especially as the Materna ‘original’ only turned up in recent years!
To quote Djamilia Prange de Oliveira’s summation of the claim from ‘Deutsche Welle’:
‘The error was discovered through a stroke of serendipity. A few years ago, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. received the war diaries of Austrian Wehrmacht soldier Walter Materna, who was stationed in Berdychiv in 1941.
They included a print of this photo, but of significantly 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 Berdychiv. July 28, 1941.”
A diary entry by Materna on the same date, in which he describes the murder of hundreds of Jewish people at the same pit at the Berdychiv citadel, reinforced the theory that the crime scene was not Vinnytsia, but Berdychiv.’ (5)
Now as we’ve already seen the claim that Materna took ‘The Last Jew in Vinnitsa’ Einsatzgruppen Photograph makes absolutely no sense, but further know that there was no Einsatzgruppe execution at Berdychiv on 28th July 1941 but rather on 30th July 1941 (6) with 148 jews being executed with the reason for the execution – which we know from the duplicated Einsatzgruppen report regarding the same execution from 8th September 1941 – being because they were jews who had engaged in ‘looting and communist activity’. (7)
This means that Materna’s diary – which Matthäus is desperate to privilege with priority over the Einsatzgruppe reports themselves as to when executions were undertaken, where and why – is incorrect and contradicts the Einsatzgruppe documentation – Matthäus doesn’t try to resolve the dating problem nor the incorrect number of victims [‘hundreds’ in Materna’s diary and only 148 in the official Einsatzgruppe report] whatsoever in his journal article – (8) which in turn suggests that Materna’s diary entry may not have been written at the time, is inaccurate and/or is in itself possibly even a fraud.
What makes me lean towards there being an issue with the evidentiary reliability of Materna’s diary is because it is all a little too convenient in that we have another copy – not the original nor the negative mind you – of ‘The Last Jew in Vinnitsa’ Einsatzgruppen Photograph which gives us the exact location, the date and the diary itself has an entry describing ‘being there’.
Even Matthäus seems surprised at how ‘lucky a find it was’ (9) but doesn’t seem to have validated it properly given he doesn’t explain how we have multiple other different copies and versions of this supposedly private photograph – taken by Materna in his version - that were in circulation before Materna’s diary, and its copy of the photograph were discovered in recent years.
Nor has any attempt been made that I can find to reconcile the mistakes in Materna’s diary – i.e., the wrong execution date and the wrong number of victims – of the event it shows compared to the documentation from Einsatzgruppe C.
Put another way: it was simply just ‘too tempting’ and rather than do the really hard work of explaining the provenance issues of the photograph, the multiple versions (and why they are often so different/show different things) and reconcile the contradictions between Materna’s diary and the extant Einsatzgruppen documentation. Matthäus has simply charged ahead without heeding scholarly caution and will likely come out with an awful lot of egg on face as a result in the future.
Thus, we can see that the origin of ‘The Last Jew in Vinnitsa’ Einsatzgruppen Photograph is almost certainly not Walter Materna and that the reliability of his war diary as a source must be called into significant question.
It may even be a post-war fake by Materna or someone else: we really won’t know until proper scholarly research and analysis have been undertaken.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-myth-and-reality-of-the-last
(2) https://www.dw.com/en/holocaust-photo-1941-nazi-murderer-now-identified/a-74394285
(3) Idem.
(4) R. Schnabel, 1957, ‘Macht ohne Moral’, 1st Edition, Roederberg Verlag: Frankfurt-am-Main, p. 307 quoted in Udo Walendy, 1989, ‘Forged “War Crime” Photos Malign the German Nation’, 2nd Edition, Verlag fur Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung: Vlotho, p. 42
(5) https://www.dw.com/en/holocaust-photo-1941-nazi-murderer-now-identified/a-74394285
(6) Carlo Mattogno, 2018, ‘The Einsatzgruppen in the Eastern Territories: Genesis, Missions and Actions’, 1st Edition, Castle Hill: Uckfield, p. 259
(7) Ibid., p. 178
(8) Jürgen Matthäus, 2023, ‘”The last Jew in Vinnitsa”: Reframing an Iconic Holocaust Photograph’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 349-359
(9) https://www.dw.com/en/holocaust-photo-1941-nazi-murderer-now-identified/a-74394285