The CODOH Revisionist Forum

Name of Nazi executioner in horrific WWII photo revealed using AI after 80 years of searching

Often associated with scams and deepfakery, AI is now being used for another, more noble purpose: unmasking history’s monsters.

A German historian has utilized the omnipresent tech to glean the identity of a notorious Nazi executioner in a World War II photograph — over 80 years after it was taken.

“The match, from everything I hear from the technical experts, is unusually high in terms of the percentage the algorithm throws out there,” German historian Jürgen Matthäus, the sleuth who solved the mystery, told the Guardian.

In the chilling photo, taken in today’s Ukraine, a bespectacled Nazi soldier aims a pistol at a man who’s kneeling before a mass grave as other SS troops look on.



The shooter has been identified as Jakobus Onnen, a teacher born in Germany in 1906. Metropol

Commonly known as the “Last Jew of Vinnitsa,” the pic remained a mystery for decades until Matthäus cracked the caper with the aid of AI, historical records and personal accounts.

According to the study published in the Journal of Historical Studies, the massacre took place July 28, 1941 in the citadel of Berdychiv and not Vinnitsa as previously thought. The regiment, Einsatzgruppe C, had reportedly been charged with eradication of “Jews and partisans” in the newly occupied Soviet region ahead of a visit by Adolf Hitler.

The gunman is believed to be Jakobus Onnen, a French, English and gym teacher who was born in 1906 in Tichelwarf, Germany, and joined the Nazi party in 1931.

Matthäus happened upon this revelation in part due to a stroke of luck, when, after word of the massacre’s real whereabouts, date and unit circulated in German media last year, a reader came forward with some vital information.



“These mass executions in this format continued until the very last day of the German occupation in the east,” Matthäus said. “I think this image should be just as important as the image of the gate in Auschwitz, because it shows us the hands-on nature, the direct confrontation between killer and person to be killed.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Based on correspondence from the time in his family’s possession, he said that the shooter bore a striking resemblance to his wife’s uncle, Onnen, and provided the aforementioned biographical details.

The pics were then sent to open-source journalism group Bellingcat volunteers, who were able to forensically analyze it using AI.

When coupled with the strong likeness and strong circumstantial evidence, it seemed like a perfect enough match to publish, per Matthäus.

While AI was undoubtedly integral in this historic eureka moment, Matthäus maintained that the tech is “not the silver bullet” but “one tool among many” and that “the human factor remains key.”

It’s not clear what prompted Onnen to radicalize, but he was reportedly a dedicated Nazi. In August 1939, just before the outbreak of war, he enlisted in the SS Death’s Head Unit at Dachau concentration camp and was working for the Nazi “Order Police” in occupied Poland by 1940, the Independent reported.

He then joined the Einsatzgruppe C — with whom he’d be snapped carrying out his horrific execution — in 1941, shortly after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The unit reportedly eliminated all but 15 of the 20,000 Jews that were there upon their arrival.

“These mass executions in this format continued until the very last day of the German occupation in the east,” Matthäus said. “I think this image should be just as important as the image of the gate in Auschwitz, because it shows us the hands-on nature, the direct confrontation between killer and person to be killed.”

Despite his fervor, Onnen reportedly was never promoted beyond a low rank and was killed fighting partisans in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine in 1943.

Unfortunately, his kneeling victim has yet to be identified, but Matthäus said he plans to remedy that as part of his next project using Soviet-era records and, possibly, the aid of AI.

https://nypost.com/2025/10/15/lifestyle ... elp-of-ai/

In 2023, Jürgen Matthäus of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum discussed the image in an article in the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies, based on an alternative print from the same negative found in the diary of Walter Materna, an Austrian captain in a Wehrmacht pioneer unit attached to Army Group South, then deployed to the Ukrainian city of Berdychiv,[1] about 90 kilometres (56 mi) north of Vinnytsia in Zhytomyr Oblast.[13] This print has the handwritten caption "Late July 1941. Execution of Jews by SS in the Berditschew citadel" on its reverse.[1] The print has finer detail and the uncropped image includes a number of additional soldiers to the left, and a building in the background.[1] Matthäus' article reproduces another photograph, possibly of the same event from a different angle, published by the Archive of Modern Conflict in an album of Wehrmacht sergeant Heinz Baier, which also mentions Berdychiv.[1][14] Materna's diary for 28 July 1941 in Berdychiv tells of hearing from other Germans at the citadel that about 70 Jews were shot that day (and one "Aryan", a trainee political commissar) after 180 and 300 killed on the previous two days.[1]

It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for there to be one musician in dress uniform, one member of the panzer corps (who looks far too young for the time period this photo is claimed to be from) and one member of the RAD in the photograph, because while it is possible it is an odd and very motley group of people which just seems… well… out of place and unusual.

It would however make perfect sense if someone was compiling a fake propaganda photo and thought that a bit of variety would make it look a bit more authentic.

There is a problem however because the actual date of the operation being referred to by Matthäus is not 28th July 1941 but rather 30th July with 148 people being executed with reason for the execution performed by the Germans – which we know from the duplicated Einsatzgruppen report regarding the same execution from 8th September 1941 – was because they were jews who had engaged in ‘looting and communist activity’.

So even if the ‘Last Jew of Vinnitsa’ Einsatzgruppen Photograph were genuine and not a fake then it wouldn’t represent what it is claimed to, but rather simply shows a legally valid military execution of looters – remember that for example the British military also mandated execution for looting in the Second World War - and a quasi-legal execution of local political criminals, which both the Western Allies and Soviet Union also engaged in.

Wetzelrad wrote: ↑Sat Oct 18, 2025 5:54 am [...]

HansHill wrote: ↑Sat Oct 18, 2025 11:36 am Further analysis of this by revisionist historian and commentator "Thomas777" as hosted on the "Pete Quinones Show"

HansHill wrote: ↑Sat Oct 18, 2025 11:36 am Further analysis of this by revisionist historian and commentator "Thomas777" as hosted on the "Pete Quinones Show"

There was also men in the field who takes snapshots as souvenirs. Okay, people think this is outlandish. I'm not passing judgment. It's one way or the other. I've seen photographs of guys in Vietnam, American soldiers literally holding up severed heads. Like for fun. Okay, I mean again, I'm not feigning moral outrage over that, but this idea that it's somehow unheard of for photographs to be taken of questionable activity or the shooting of non-combatants, that's very naive.

But also what's going on in that photo is very above board. It's not the kind of thing that was being shown in movie houses in Berlin or Hamburg, but it was a major component of operational doctrine in theater, and that's characteristic of modern war.

Stubble wrote: ↑Sat Oct 18, 2025 12:31 pm This new picture doesn't have the problems the older one does, but, I need to see source. I can not put out of my mind the idea that it was cleaned up with AI, because it is so radically different with regard to the light source and the lack of smudging.

pilgrimofdark wrote: ↑Sat Oct 18, 2025 4:02 pmThis article[/url] also claims that the below photo is another angle of the same shooting action, although different victim.

Wetzelrad wrote: ↑Sat Oct 18, 2025 5:54 am I have no familiarity with this photo but I want to make a few comments.

Walendy makes much from the various dark and light spots on old versions of the photo, but obviously these result primarily from the crude copying process that was used. They look especially rough to us because they have been copied so many times, but these artifacts disappear in the more recent, cleaner version of the photo (Link). I see nothing technically wrong with the new version, and in a direct comparison there is nothing incompatible between the new and old versions. It is not as if anything was hand-drawn in, and it doesn't look like a composite of multiple images.

The one oddity is that Matthäus used the background of the photo to geolocate it, but the background does not appear correctly in the old photos. It instead looks like smoke, as Stubble says, or haze.
....

pilgrimofdark wrote: ↑Sat Oct 18, 2025 4:02 pm This is the best copy of it that I can find.

Spoiler

The early scans are very poor, and the "enhanced" version seems to be run through some filter that messes up the color grading in an attempt to restore detail to the faces. It makes the bottom of the photo B&W but the top of the photo sepia tone.

This article also claims that the below photo is another angle of the same shooting action, although different victim.

Spoiler

It's printed in the book All at War: Photography by German Soldiers 1939–45.

Proving the provenance of these photos is always difficult.

The guy directly to the left of the man moving isn't wearing a uniform at all.

One of the corpses in the grave seems to be only the bottom half of the body, like the top half was blown away? There seem to be a lot more legs than arms.

Hektor wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 8:51 pm There is a whole list of problems with that picture. It's pretty obviously a doctored image. It's of course possible that they use some real photos to assemble that image and that then would include real world persons and locations.

Callafangers wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 9:26 pm

Hektor wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 8:51 pm There is a whole list of problems with that picture. It's pretty obviously a doctored image. It's of course possible that they use some real photos to assemble that image and that then would include real world persons and locations.

I know this has been the "take" of many in the revisionist camp over the years, I think largely because especially poor quality versions of the photo were all that was 'floating around' in the past, making it more difficult to take any of it seriously. But the higher quality version by pilgrimofdark does seem more realistic than others I've seen in the past. And are we really saying it isn't accepted that the Germans sometimes did partisan executions that would have looked something like what we see in that photo? I think the bigger context worth mentioning is that, even if a legitimate photo, what we see there is a single man beside a small pit with some half a dozen corpses. As in, a rare event; better reflecting selective partisan actions and the like. This actually supports the revisionist view, especially compared with the other, similar photo, which has essentially the same features and even more Germans just 'standing around' as spectators.

pilgrimofdark wrote: ↑Mon Oct 20, 2025 12:42 am Also, it seems to take a dozen or more Germans from several divisions to execute one Jew at a time. This puts a dent in the fabled "German efficiency," not to mention the "systematic, industrial" nature of the whole genocide.

"Unfortunately, his kneeling victim has yet to be identified, but Matthäus said he plans to remedy that as part of his next project using Soviet-era records and, possibly, the aid of AI."