Photographer shot war history in making

Among the front page stories in mid-July 1945 – a month before the end of World War II – was one on Lt. Arnold Samuelson, a Tacoman home on leave from the fighting in Europe.

A smiling Samuelson was shown posing with his wife, Joyce, who had traveled from her parents’ home in Mount Vernon, N.Y., where she lived during the war, to be with him.

The photo was a major role reversal for Samuelson, who was serving as a combat photographer with the Army’s 167th Signal Corps Co.

Samuelson grew up on North 18th Street, the son of Swedish immigrants. His photography career began when he was just a child, eventually working for local photo studios after his high school graduation.

The news story alluded to the fame Samuelson earned for some of his photos, including of the first U.S. troops crossing the Rhine River into Germany at Remagen. He also photographed the Battle of the Bulge and when soldiers of the 9th Armored Division met the Red Army near Linz, Austria.

But Samuelson gained the greatest fame for his images after the liberation of the concentration camp outside Ebensee, Austria, in May 1945.

The short article that ran July 13, 1945, on Page One made little mention of those photos. In fact, it wasn’t until later in his life that Samuelson, who died in 2002, talked of his time at the front lines and the images he captured.

“He didn’t say a lot about it to us when we were kids,” said Andrea Adamko, the oldest of Samuelson’s three daughters. “But then things like the 50th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge came up and he started talking about it.

“Thank God he did. But he was no different than any other father after the war. You put that part of your life away. My father’s World War II experience was packed away in footlockers in the basement.”

It was in the mid-1990s when Samuelson revealed what he had seen and photographed.

“One day he came to see me and asked if we could go on the Internet and see if there was a memorial for the Ebensee camp,” Adamko said. “After that, we couldn’t stop him from talking about it. It was like 50 years of history came pouring out.”

The KZ Ebensee concentration camp was part of the Mauthausen camp complex in north-central Austria. In its 18 months of operation, more than 27,000 prisoners were housed at Ebensee, and an estimated 8,200 people died there, according to the Ebensee Museum Web site.

The prisoners were used to dig tunnels for what was to be a rocket research center. When the center was moved to another area, the tunnels were used for an oil refinery and for manufacturing motor parts for tanks and trucks, according to the site.

Samuelson took his photos two days after the camp was liberated by U.S. troops on May 6, 1945. Some of the images were published June 3, 1945, in The Tacoma Sunday News Tribune as a photomontage entitled, “Remember This! Don’t Fraternize!”

In 1996, Samuelson returned to Ebensee and visited the KZ Ebensee Memorial. He eventually made three trips there, once as the guest speaker at the annual remembrance day held each May.

“We were kind of surprised the Austrian people, especially the older ones, were still in denial that all this happened,” said Billie Samuelson, his second wife, about their trips.

Then, on Feb. 24, 1997, Time magazine used one of his Ebensee photos on its cover to illustrate a story about the Holocaust. A short time later Samuelson was contacted by George Havas, a survivor of Ebensee who recognized some of the people in the cover photo.

In November that year, Samuelson and his three daughters traveled to meet Havas at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

“George and my father were sitting at the end of a table. They talked a blue streak for three hours,” Adamko said. “It was one of those moments in time, it was so moving. They shared something that the rest of us could never imagine.”

Since her father’s death in 2002, Adamko and other family members have been preserving his works. They honored his wish to donate the photos he had to the Holocaust museum.

“There was probably 1,000 pieces,” Adamko said. “There were negatives, prints, letters, citations. For (the museum staff) this was like a gold mine.”

Some of his works are on display at the museum, dedicated in 1993.

“He was one step alongside history from September 1944 to 1945,” Adamko said.

Jeffrey P. Mayor: 253-597-8640

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OUR 125TH ANNIVERSARY

This is one of a series of stories appearing during The News Tribune’s 125th year. Every Sunday we take a look at what happened during the same week sometime in the past 125 years. To suggest a week or an event for a story, e-mail your idea and details to randy.mccarthy@ thenewstribune.com.