The Last Jew

Have you seen this picture before? 

It was taken near Berdychiv, Ukraine. Though we do not know who the Jewish man is, perched above a mass grave moments before he too was murdered, we now believe we know the identity of his murderer. 

Now identified as Jakobus, Oehnen, the executioner was a German schoolteacher who became an SS officer. The picture you see here, likely taken by a German soldier, was given the title, "The Last Jew of Vinnitsa."

Only recently was the murderer identified by German historian Jurgen Matthaus. Matthaus explains that Oehnen was part of a 700-man mobile SS unit tasked with the job of "cleansing" areas already conquered by the Nazis. Oehnen's group unit is "credited" with murdering over 100,000 civilians, most of them Jews.

I'm happy to write that he died in combat in 1943. The photo itself was first published during the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961.

With the added information on the identity of the killer, one is left bereft of hope. If a teacher could participate in murdering unarmed civilians solely on the basis of their religion, what hope do we have for the uneducated masses?

According to an Austrian captain in a Wehrmacht pioneer unit, 70 Jews were murdered that day. In his diary, he describes these events in a cold, disconnected fashion. On the back of the picture, later found in his diary, are the words, "The Last Jew of Vinnitsa".

Another Wehrmacht officer, Lieutenant Erwin Bingel, blamed the massacre on Ukrainian militia "commanded by the SS":

Bingel testified: “In the morning at 10.15, wild shooting and terrible human cries reached our ears. At first, I failed to grasp what was taking place, but when I approached the window from which I had a broad view over the whole of the town park, the following spectacle unfolded before my eyes and those of my men, who, alerted by the tumult, had meanwhile gathered in my room.

Ukrainian militia on horseback, armed with pistols, rifles and long straight cavalry swords, were riding wildly inside and around the town park. As far as we could make out, they were driving people along before their horses- men, women and children.

A shower of bullets was then fired at this human mass. Those not hit outright were struck down with the swords. Like some ghostly apparition, this horde of Ukrainians, let loose and commanded by SS officers, trampled savagely over human bodies, ruthlessly killing innocent children, mothers and old people whose only crime was that they had escaped the great mass murder, so as eventually to be shot or beaten to death like wild animals.”

Their only "crime" was that they had escaped the great mass murder only to be shot like "wild animals."

I sit here in Israel, generations after this murder and think of the last Jew of Vinnitsa...murdered by a schoolteacher. And I think of our hostages, several of whom were held hostage by teachers, doctors, and UN employees.

The title of this photo was given by an Austrian...but the real story in this photo, in so many massacres, pogroms, inquisitions, intifadas, is not the Jew. This man was one of six million murdered in cold blood, but the man holding the gun. He is the essence of evil, the essence of banality. Like the Gazan civilians who merely came into Israel to loot and walk off with some jewelry, a refrigerator, a car, or whatever else he could walk off with.

The hatred that a German schoolteacher donned so easily one day in his life is our greatest enemy. That hatred, like the Jewish people, is eternal. We have struggled for thousands of years and beyond. It is a never-ending battle between the Jewish people and the hatred that is ingrained in the very blood of our enemies.

The title was wrong then and wrong now. There is no 'last Jew' nor will there ever be...and that very truth is what our enemies fear most. They too have fought for thousands of years, disappeared and reappeared and yet here we remain. The secret of that man sitting there about to die is the same secret that lives in the hearts and souls of the hostages who struggled for the last 2 years to survive.

We are stronger than the Nazis who surrounded that man whose name we may never know, stronger than all the Gazans put together because hate guides them, and love fills us.

I looked at this picture...and realized. Evil remains, and sometimes, in the short term, evil wins. But not for long. Not forever. Forever is Israel.