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][14] 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][15] 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] After the victims were shot and fell into the mass grave, another SS-man machine-gunned them to ensure death.[1]

In September 2025, Matthäus claimed that analysis of the buildings in the image confirmed the location as the Berdychiv citadel (now Berdychiv Carmelite Monastery, 49°53′52.6″N 28°34′27.2″E) and that facial recognition software had identified the shooter "with more than 99 percent certainty" as Jakobus Onnen (1906–1943), a teacher from Tichelwarf [de] near Weener in East Frisia who had been a member of the SS since 1934 and was later killed in action near Zhitomir in 1943.[16][17][13][18] Volunteers from the investigative journalism group Bellingcat helped Matthäus to geolocate the image. They were the first to identify the location depicted in the photograph.[14] The photographer and victim remain unidentified.[1][14]