Have the people in the famous photograph "The Last Jew in Vinnitsa" ever been identified?

by 124876720

The photo can be viewed here: https://m.imgur.com/gallery/BmKxkVO

It has become a famous image of the Holocaust: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Jew_in_Vinnitsa

But I am curious: has anyone ever tried to identify either the victim or the perpetrators? Vinnytsia is a pretty big town and was during the Barbarossa-period. The photo was first popularised in 1961 during Eichmann's trial so there is every chance people were still alive who remembered the events.

Likewise, we know roughly the itinerary of the Einsatzgruppen death squads and we know they were massacring Jews in Vinnytsia between 1941-43. The shooter has a pretty distinctive face and we have a shortlist of around 3000 who served in the Einsatzgruppen.

Do we know who the people in the photo are? Could we find out?

voyeur324

/u/estherke has addressed a similar question before.

/u/commiespacenvader has a special interest in the analysis of photographs as primary sources and wrote about it for the 'Monday Methods' series. Further examples are given in the comments by other flairs.

PeculiarLeah

Unfortunately no one in this photograph has been identified. Actually identifying people in Holocaust era, or WWII era photographs in general is often notoriously difficult, even when the subjects were relatively well known, because of desperate sourcing, problems with archives, the failings of human memory, and simply the confusion and chaos of war. While the shooter's face is fairly distinctive, only half his face is visible, and the other perpetrators are far enough back that accurate identification would be difficult. As you mentioned, given the information we have about Einsatzgruppe-D members, it would not necessarily be impossible to identify the shooter, but it is unlikely. Identifying the victim is likely impossible. The sourcing of the photo is somewhat unclear, but we do know that it was not discovered by someone from the Vinnytsia region, and that region had an extremely high death rate. Ultimately, it is likely that the only people who knew this man in life, were in that mass grave.

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/bingel.html

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa5355