Why is this film
Important
World War II was the most visually documented event in history. Tens of thousands of images and countless feet of motion picture footage were captured by cameramen in every branch of the armed services in both the Allied and Axis forces. But because the photographers and motion-picture cameramen of the U.S. Army Signal Corps were not credited by name, they have remained anonymous–until now.
Photo by Walter Rosenblum, German Prisoners, Omaha Beachhead, Normandy, France, June, 1944
By combining combat cameraman Walter Rosenblum’s film images with his After-Action Reports and his recently discovered letters to his wife, his filmmaker daughter Nina Rosenblum and her partner, Daniel Allentuck, have created a unique and compelling account of her father’s war, thereby honoring the courage and sacrifice of the hundreds of Signal Corps combat cameramen who “fought with cameras” to bring civilians on the homefront—as well as future generations—a truthful and unsparing picture of the face of war.
Unseen Images
What distinguishes this film from other documentaries about WWII is that it presents a first-person, eyewitness account of the fighting rather than an overview of the decisions made by Generals and political leaders. Rosenblum's burning hatred of fascist tyranny and his empathy for the suffering endured by the war's civilian victims are evident in every image he made images which are seen here for the first time in eighty
Photo by Walter Rosenblum, French Boy Saluting Tricolor, Cherbourg, June 27, 1944
Witness to History
One of the most decorated Signal Corps combat cameramen of World War II, Rosenblum recorded many of its most famous battles: the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach, the capture of Cherbourg, La Haye-du-Puits, Saint Lo, St. Malo and Brest, the bitter winter campaign in Alsace, and the advance of the U.S. 7th Army through France and southern Germany. On April 4, 1945, Rosenblum filmed the liberation of prisoner of war camp Offlag XIII-B in Hammelberg and on April 29, he was among the first Americans to liberate the concentration camp at Dachau.
Lens on War
The crucial connecting thread in the film is supplied by excerps from the nearly 180 wartime letters Rosenblum wrote to his first wife, May. The letters surfaced unexpectedly thanks to a fortuitous communication from a former teacher and history buff named Don Lown, who’d acquired them from a neighbor sixty years earlier and returned them to the Rosenblum family sixty years later+.
Photo by Walter Rosenblum, Memorial Service in Honor of American Dead held in US Military Cemetery, Behind Omaha Beach, 1944
“I was the most eager GI you could imagine. I wanted to be in that war. That was a good war. We were fighting Hitler and Mussolini and everything they had been doing in Europe. It had to be stopped. And I wanted to use whatever art I had as a photographer to make a contribution to that struggle.”
—Walter Rosenblum
Photo by Walter Rosenblum, Stretcher Bearers, St. Malo, France, 1944