Historian uses AI to help identify Nazi in notorious Holocaust murder image

'I think this image should be just as important as the image of the gate in Auschwitz,' says the US-based German historian Jürgen Matthäus. 'I think this image should be just as important as the image of the gate in Auschwitz,' says the US-based German historian Jürgen Matthäus. Thu 2 Oct 2025 03.23 EDTLast modified on Thu 2 Oct 2025 08.22 EDT It is one of the most chilling images of the Holocaust: a bespectacled Nazi soldier trains a pistol at the head of a resigned man kneeling in a suit before a pit full of corpses. The picture taken in today's Ukraine was long known, mistakenly, as The Last Jew in Vinnitsa, and was for decades shrouded in mystery. The US-based German historian Jürgen Matthäus has for years painstakingly assembled the puzzle pieces and, with the help of artificial intelligence, is confident he has identified the killer.