Daughter’s film on Walter Rosenblum shows the faces of war

By Patricia Platt

Longtime Norfolk resident Nina Rosenblum presented her award-winning documentary “They Fight With Cameras” to a full house at the Norfolk Library on Saturday, Sept. 26. The film tells the story of her father, decorated U.S. Army Signal Corps combat cameraman Walter Rosenblum. “It was very special for me to screen ‘They Fight With Cameras’ at the Norfolk Library because our family has deep ties to Norfolk,” said Rosenblum.

After the war, Walter taught photography at the Yale Summer School of Art in Norfolk for 25 years, and he and his wife, photography historian Naomi Rosenblum, later retired to the town they loved. The film was produced and directed by Nina Rosenblum and her partner, Daniel Allentuck, son of Oscar-winning actress Maureen Stapleton of Lenox, Mass. For Rosenblum, the evening was a chance to show her Norfolk friends “a side of my father that was not well known to them: a courageous combat cameraman whose images helped the world confront the truth of the war.”

One of the most decorated Signal Corps cameramen of the war, receiving the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Presidential Unit Citation, Walter Rosenblum filmed some of its defining moments: D-Day landings on Omaha Beach, the capture of Cherbourg and the bitter winter campaign in Alsace. On April 29, 1945, he was among the first Americans to enter the concentration camp at Dachau. “It’s like a nightmare you’re trying to photograph as you’re trying to survive,” he recalled. “It’ll never leave me.”

Narrated by Liev Schreiber, the 55-minute film recounts Rosenblum’s service through his own photographs, never-before-seen motion picture footage, his after-action reports and recently discovered wartime letters. It has received best documentary honors at 15 international film festivals. The film also restores the names of anonymous soldier-cameramen who served alongside him, including movie cameraman Val Pope, killed by a sniper in Brittany.

“The vital role played by WWII combat cameramen has been largely overlooked,” said Nina Rosenblum. “Operating under extreme danger, often armed with nothing more than a camera, they captured the definitive visual record of the century’s defining conflict, and their footage provided undeniable proof of Nazi atrocities at the Nuremberg trials.”

In the question-and-answer session following the screening, the audience’s enthusiastic questions drew out the story of how the documentary came together. Rosenblum said it began with extensive research for a 2014 photographic exhibit and then a remarkable stroke of luck: 180 lengthy, dated letters that Walter had written to his first wife and that had been rescued from the trash by a curious 17-year-old, eventually found their way to Rosenblum. The letters provided the dates and locations she and her team needed to search the National Archives and Records Administration for the photographs and film footage that tell Walter’s story and the story of how combat cameramen gave the world “a truthful and unsparing picture of the face of war.”

The film will soon be available on Amazon Prime and Kanopy, the free streaming service available through public libraries.

Updates are posted at www.theyfightwithcameras.com.