Arnold E. Samuelson (1917-2002) was a combat photographer during World War II who was among the first

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

photographers to document

Nazi war crimes The governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany (under Adolf Hitler) ordered, organized and condoned a substantial number of war crimes, first in the Herero and Namaqua genocide and then in the World War I, First and World War II, Second Wo ...

. Before America's entry into World War II, Samuelson worked for the

Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

Company in Portland, Oregon. In May 1942, he was inducted into the U.S. Army. He served in the Army Air Forces and later joined the Signal Corps in January 1943. Three months after

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...

(June 6, 1944), Samuelson came ashore on the Normandy beaches with the 167th Signal Photographic Company and began documenting the Allied military campaigns in France and Belgium. He saw service in the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944), and, in 1945, he was given command of Combat Assignment Unit #123. That unit consisted of two motion picture cameramen, John O'Brian and Edward Urban, and two still photographers, J Malan Heslop and Walter McDonald. Samuelson's group served initially with the 9th Armored Division, advancing as far as Leipzig, then was attached to the 80th Infantry Division as it moved southward to Bavaria and Austria. During this campaign, Samuelson's crew was the first group of Allied photographers to document Nazi crimes and the plight of concentration camp prisoners at

Lenzing Lenzing is a small town of approximately 5,000 residents, three kilometers north of Lake Attersee in Austria, It is located in the Upper Austrian part of the Salzkammergut. Lenzing's economy is partly based on tourism, but the town is much more ...

and Ebensee, two subcamps of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

External links

167th Signal Photographic Company - A World War II Reenacting group in the USA
*United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Arnold E. Samuelson
{{DEFAULTSORT:Samuelson, Arnold E. 1917 births 2002 deaths Holocaust historiography American war photographers Mauthausen concentration camp Photographers from Oregon United States Army Air Forces soldiers United States Army soldiers United States Army personnel of World War II