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What one sees when one looks back today at the
pictures and reads the reports produced by Army
Signal Corps OCS graduate Samuelson and his men
is the act of terror that comprised the
Holocaust, come to life. Seeing his pictures,
there can be no question as to whether the
Holocaust was real or not. The pictures say it
all.
For those, like the young millennial boyfriend
of the bartender we began this story with… those
who deny the Holocaust; part of the problem lies
in not knowing what the Holocaust was. How does
one define the Holocaust? Was it a Hitler thing,
or a German thing? Was it an event, or an act
against humanity? In reality, wasn’t it little
more than the unintended consequence of war?
Most learned people today know that is not the
case. To the contrary, it was the intended
consequence of war, not the unintended
consequence. More to the point, this particular
intended consequence existed in absence of the
pretense of war. That is, as Hitler said so
emphatically in
Mein Kampf, regardless of whether war
provided a mask behind which the Jews could be
exterminated or not, they needed to be
exterminated. Lieutenant Samuelson and his men
documented not just that fact but that belief by
the Nazis.
As to how one should define the
Holocaust, one
of the more succinct definitions is provided by
the Holocaust Encyclopedia:
The Holocaust was the
systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored
persecution and murder of six million Jews by
the Nazi regime and its
collaborators.
Holocaust is a word of Greek
origin meaning "sacrifice by fire."
Proof of the Holocaust exists today because of
the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and men like Second
Lieutenant Arnold E. Samuelson, a graduate of
Army Signal OCS Class 42-03.
We owe a debt of gratitude to him and his men
for their efforts to document society’s march
through time, and the Jews' march through hell. There is no doubt that in the
course of their photographing World War II,
Samuelson and his men played a crucial role in
developing the documentary evidence needed to
prove the existence of the atrocities committed
by the Nazis, the atrocities that we today call
the Holocaust.
Second Lieutenant Arnold E. Samuelson, a
graduate of Army Signal OCS Class 42-03… another
Signal Corps Success.
Sources:
Jones, Marla, “Photographers document wartime
Army,” Army Communicator, Special Edition:
The Signal Corps in World War II, vol. 20,
no. 4.
Rodgers, Mike “Signal Corps photographers
capture D-day,” Army Communicator, Special
Edition: The Signal Corps in World War II,
vol. 20, no. 4.
Various Samuelson background material:
Histomil.com search for Battle of the Bulge
Historical background material, various
quotations, pictures and reference material:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Washington, DC., including among others:
Holocaust Encyclopedia
Flossenburg
Holocaust Timeline of Events
Arnold E. Samuelson, Photographs
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