I've seen the infamous photo of “The last Jew of Vinnytsia.” sometimes with a short note saying that on the back of the photo the German soldier had written “The last Jew of Vinnytsia.” Does anyone know more about the circumstances of the discovery of this photo? Who found it and how was it discovered? Was it donated to museum? Were the soldiers ever named/charged?
OK, I've tried. I've tried hard. And this is what I found.
On September 22, 1941 there was a large massacre of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen (SS and police killing squads) in Vinnitsa. This was witnessed by Wehrmacht reservists under the command of Erwin Bingel, who was horrified and took two rolls of photographs in order to later be able to prove that such atrocities happened in the name of Germany. Bingel testified (PDF) for the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal about this massacre and similar ones at Uman, also in Ukraine. Here are some of the pictures he took. Be warned, they are graphic.
As you can tell, these people were forced to undress before they were shot. The man in the famous “last Jew of Vinnitsa” picture and the people below him in the mass grave are all clothed. Therefore it cannot be a picture from the massacre described above.
Now, Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum and research center says on its website that the picture was taken during the earlier shooting in July or early August 1941 of a number of Jewish intellectuals. Personally, I doubt this. The man in this picture shows all the characteristics of severe malnutrition and starvation. There was simply no time between the arrival of the Germans on July 19 and early August for anybody to become that emaciated.
Moreover, there is the fact that this picture is known as “the last Jew of Vinnitsa”. My educated guess therefore is that it depicts the killing off of the last inmates of the Vinnitsa labour camp in the spring of 1943 (as stated in Arad, Yitzhak. The Holocaust in the Soviet Union. U of Nebraska Press, 2009 - which by the way does not mention the picture). Incidentally, these people had been employed in constructing a forward HQ called “Wehrwolf” for no other than Hitler himself, which he effectively used from July 16 to September 27, 1942.
However, I have been unable to find the answer you were looking for: who took the picture, how it was found and what happened to the photographer. Most books just state what you have found yourself, that this was a picture taken by a German soldier in 1943, found among his personal belongings. No one has a source or attribution.
Sorry.