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. German troops encircle the scene.

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.

Parade of SS formations at Nazi Rally of Freedom, Luitpold Arena, Nuremberg, 16 September 1935.

According to findings, he has now published in the respected academic periodical Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (Journal of Historical Studies), the SS carried out the massacre on 28 July 1941, most likely in the early afternoon, in the citadel of Berdychiv.

The city was for centuries a thriving centre of Jewish life. It is located 150km south-west of Kyiv and about 90km north of what is now known in English as Vinnytsia, which had long been considered falsely to be the site of the killings.

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