The Last Jew in Vinnitsa is a haunting image for so many reasons. The look on the man’s face, the contents of the pit below him, and the number of guards looking on all contribute to the horror of the picture. There’s more going on than what it appears, however.
The Last Jew in Vinnitsa is unique because it is one of the few images taken featuring the Einsatzgruppe, or the mobile death squad of the Schutzstaffel, commonly referred to as the SS. How the photo was made known to the public is telling, as is what the image reveals about the early days of the Holocaust.
To “cleanse the territory of Ukraine for the future settlement of Germans,” the Third Reich organized forces called Einsatzgruppen under the authority of the SS. Before extermination centers at sites like Bikenau and Treblinka were opened, units called Einsatzkommandos went through regions of Europe and murdered Jews.
In the Vinnitsa oblast (region) of Ukraine, the Einsatzgruppen swept through numerous times and killed countless Jews. Historians call this early phase of the Holocaust the “Holocaust by bullets.”
It’s estimated that roughly 1.5 million Jews were living in Ukraine before World War II. By mid-1942, tens of thousands of Jews had been killed by the SS and other Nazi groups. The exact date of the photo from Vinnitsa is contested, but it’s generally believed to have been taken at some point between July 1941 and January 1942.
