trouble podcast title, the deep dive, the lens
of history, Jamie Lynn Heslop, WWII combat photography,
and documenting truth. Apple podcast description,
Apple podcast description. Join us for a profound
deep dive into the life and lens of Jamie Lynn
Heslop, a pioneering WWII combat photographer
who captured some of the 20th century's most
defining moments. From his early days as a Utah
farm boy to his vital role in the 167th Signal
Photographic Company, we explore how Heslop documented
everything from the Battle of the Bulge to Churchill
and de Gaulle in Paris. Most crucially, we unpack
his harrowing work as one of the first American
photographers to capture evidence of Nazi war
crimes during the liberation of the Evancy concentration
camp, discover how this Holocaust photography
preserved the truth for the United States National
Archives and the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and
follow his post -war journey as a longtime for
the Deseret News and prominent figure in LDS
Church history. If you've ever wondered about
the individuals behind the camera who shape our
historical memory, this deep dive is for you.
Imagine standing in the absolute freezing cold
of Europe in the winter of 1944. That's brutal
conditions. Right, totally brutal. You are thousands
of miles away from home. Your breath is pluming
in the icy air and the deafening earth -shaking
sound of artillery fires going off all around
you. Your fingers are completely numb. Your heart
is pounding in your chest. But your primary job,
your singular duty in this unimaginable chaos
isn't to hold a rifle or command a squad. It
is to hold a small metal camera. Which is just
wild to think about. It really is. You have to
keep your hands steady, you know, manually adjust
your aperture, look through a tiny glass viewfinder
and document history as it quite literally explodes
around you. Yeah, that level of focus is. It's
hard to even comprehend. Exactly. I mean, have
you ever looked at a famous historical photograph,
one of those gritty black and white images that
completely defines an era and considered the
physical reality of the person who had to be
standing there? Right. Someone actually had to
take the picture. Yes. The person who had to
conquer every human instinct to flee just to
freeze that moment in time for the rest of us.
It really changes your relationship with history
when you start looking at the photographer rather
than just the photograph. Absolutely. Because,
um... We consume so many images today, thousands
of them, effortlessly scrolling past our eyes,
but we rarely stop to think about the human being
on the other side of the lens, especially in
a combat zone. The act of taking a picture in
that environment is, well, it's an act of profound
physical courage. And that tension is really
the heartbeat of our deep dive today. We are
exploring the life of J. Malin Heslop. We're
charting the phenomenal trajectory of a man who
served as a critical eye for the world during
the Second World War. A really unique perspective.
We are going to explore how his life's work bridged
the unimaginable global trauma of the 1940s and
then transitioned into a life of deep localized
community faith and leadership. Yeah, it's quite
the shift. It's a narrative. that moves from
the absolute darkest shadows of the 20th century
back into the light of a very quiet, purposeful
civilian life. The geography of his life alone
is staggering. I mean, we are tracing a journey
that begins on a very humble Weber County, Utah
farm, moves through the glamour of Hollywood
training backlots, plunges into the grim historical
liberation of the Ebb and Zee concentration camp
in Austria. and eventually settles into a decades
-long career as an influential newspaper editor
and a significant leader within the LDS church.
It's a massive scope. The scope is massive, yeah,
both geographically and emotionally. And the
reason this individual story carries so much
weight for you, for us today, is rooted in our
modern relationship with images. We live in an
era where we all have incredibly powerful cameras
right in our pocket. Taking hundreds of photos
a day. Without a second thought. We filter them,
we manipulate them, we delete them. But Heslop's
story strips all of that away. It is a master
class in the absolute weight, the profound responsibility,
and the vital historical necessity of the photographic
image. It really is. His life demonstrates what
it means when taking a photograph isn't just
about capturing a personal memory, but about
securing irrefutable historical evidence for
the world. You're talking about the camera as
an instrument of truth, and in some cases an
instrument of justice. Exactly. So let's look
at where that foundational understanding of the
world begins. J. Malan Heslop was born on June
18, 1923 in a place called Taylor, Utah. He was
the oldest of three children born to Jesse and
Zella Malan Heslop. And when he was three years
old, his family relocated to a farm in West Weber,
Utah. Now, growing up on a farm in rural Utah
during the 1920s and the 1930s is a highly specific
cultural and environmental crucible. Oh, for
sure. It's an environment that fundamentally
shapes how a person interacts with the physical
world. Think about what a farm upbringing actually
demands of a young person. A lot of hard work.
Right. It's not just doing chores, though. It
is an education in immense patience. You learn
that things take time to grow, that seasons have
to change, and that you cannot rush the natural
order of things. You are totally at the mercy
of elements much larger than yourself. Constantly.
It also instills a hypervigilant sense of observation.
You have to watch the weather patterns. You have
to observe the moisture in the soil. You have
to pay attention to the health of the livestock.
It's all connected. You're intimately connected
to the physical world around you in a very grounded,
practical way. Yeah. When you look at the traits
required to be a masterful documentary photographer.
Oh, that's a great connection. Patience, hyper
observation, spatial awareness, and an understanding
of light and time. You realize that a 1930s farm
is actually a brilliant training ground. And
the specific spark for photography didn't come
from a school program initially. It came directly
from his family. His father, Jesse, actively
encouraged and inspired J. Mellon's interest
in the camera. That's pretty rare for the time.
Right. Jesse let young Mellon use his own camera
and allowed him to practice not just taking photos
but developing the prints. We really need to
pause and appreciate the reality of that in the
1930s. taking and developing prints back then
was a deeply manual, highly scientific, and expensive
process. Not like today. Not at all instantaneous.
Yeah. You had to understand the physics of light,
and you had to understand the chemistry of the
dark ring, the developer, the stop bath, the
fixer. Messy stuff. Very. You had to work blindly
in the dark, relying on touch and timing. It
required meticulous dedication. So, for a father
during the Great Depression era to trust his
son with fragile equipment and expensive chemical
supplies. Yeah, that shows a massive investment
in his child's curiosity. Exactly. It's hands
-on learning, quite literally in the dark. And
that curiosity clearly blossomed. By the time
Heslop reaches Weber High School, he is highly
engaged across the board. Doing a bit of everything.
He really is. He's participating in track and
fields. He's playing the trombone in the school
band. He's a member of the photography club,
and he serves as the yearbook photographer. It
paints a picture of a young man learning how
to observe people in different settings. He's
athletic. He's musical. He's artistic. Very well
-rounded. He is learning how to exist within
and document different micro communities, which
is an essential soft skill for a photojournalist.
You have to know how to read a room or a track
meet or a band practice to anticipate where the
action is going to be. And then we get to the
specific hardware he was using, which is such
a telling detail. His very first camera was a
35 millimeter Argus C3. It was equipped with
an f3 .5 lens and a flash. The Argus C3 is a
legendary piece of equipment in the history of
photography. His famous nickname was The Brick.
And if you've ever held one, you know exactly
why. I can imagine. It was heavy. It was completely
boxy. It was incredibly durable. And it was unapologetically
manual. It essentially looks like a small cinder
block with a lens attached to it. It really does.
To take a picture with the brick, you couldn't
rely on automation. You had to mentally calculate
the exposure. You had to adjust that f3 .5 lens.
Which was decent for the time, right? It was
reasonably fast for the time and allowed decent
light gathering, but it required precise focusing.
You had to manually set the shutter speed. and
the focusing mechanism itself was a rangefinder.
How did that work? You look through a tiny window,
saw two overlapping ghost -like images of your
subject, and you had to turn a stiff dial until
those two images merged into one perfectly sharp
image. Only then could you fire the shutter.
Wow. It forces a massive amount of intentionality.
It forces deliberate sequential thought. using
a heavy, complex, fully manual camera, like the
trained Heslop's eye and his muscle memory, long
before he ever saw a battlefield. He had to learn
to operate those dials instinctively. And that
instinct is put to the ultimate test remarkably
early in his life. His first photography job
was with the Ogden Standard Examiner. While he's
working there, an airport fire breaks out. Heslop
rushes to the scene, captures photos of this
massive fire, and his images make the front page
of the examiner. Think about the psychological
barrier he had to cross in that moment. That
local airport fire was essentially his crucible.
It was his introductory course in disaster photography.
Definitely. An event like that requires you to
conquer human instinct. When there is a massive
fire, every biological imperative screams at
you to run away. Photojournalism demands that
you run toward the danger to get the shot. Which
is terrifying. He had to reign perfectly calm,
calculate his manual exposure on the brick, merge
those two little rangefinder images, and hold
the camera completely steady while chaos, heat,
and destruction are unfolding right in front
of him. He proved he could keep his cool while
the world was literally burning. And that ability
becomes critical because his timeline accelerates
incredibly fast right after high school. It really
does. He graduates from Weber High School on
May 17th, 1941. He starts at Weber College in
the fall of 1941. He then goes on to study photography
at Los Angeles City College. And by October 1942,
he enlists in the United States Army Reserve.
The historical context surrounding those dates
is everything. He starts college in the fall
of 1941. On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor is
attacked. Right. Everything changes. The United
States officially enters the Second World War.
The entire environment he is studying in shifts
dramatically overnight. He transitions from a
young man honing his craft as a local news photographer
to living in a nation fully mobilized for total
global war. Answering the call. Exactly. Answering
the military call in October 1942 was a shared
reality for his generation. But his specific
skill set, his ability to remain calm behind
a lens was about to be utilized in a highly specialized
way. Which brings us to a wildly fascinating
pivot. In November 1942, shortly after enlisting,
Heslop is sent to study at Paramount Studios
in Hollywood. Yes. With the Signal Corps Photographer
School, Hollywood Studios training combat photographers.
It sounds like a bizarre contradiction. You have
Hollywood glamour on one side and the brutal
grit of a global war on the other. But from a
strategic standpoint, it was brilliant. The military
looked at Hollywood Studios and saw the undisputed
masters of visual storytelling. Paramount Pictures
knew everything there was to know about lighting,
about framing, about the technical mechanics
of cameras, and about how different film stocks
reacted to different environments. They were
the premier image makers of the world. And the
United States military recognized that they desperately
needed those exact skills to document the war
effort. For propaganda? Well, the military needed
visual documentation for three distinct critical
reasons. First. Tactical intelligence. They needed
to see troop movements, enemy fortifications,
and terrain. Makes sense. Second, public morale.
They needed to show the American public what
the soldiers were facing to maintain support
for the war and drive war bond sales. And third,
they needed it for the historical record. So
Paramount was the best place to learn that. The
Signal Corps realized that a farm boy from Utah
who cut his teeth on an Argus C3 had the raw
talent. But if they sent him to the Paramount
lots, he could learn how to frame a shot from
the greatest visual technicians alive. He is
learning the language of cinema to document the
reality of war. Exactly. After this highly specialized
training, he is assigned to the 167th Signal
Photographic Company. He receives the rank of
technician fifth grade, or T5, which is the equivalent
of a corporal. Right. He completes his basic
training in Lebanon, Tennessee, which is where
he takes his first official army photographs.
And then his deployment is set. On July 23, 1944,
he ships out on a vessel called the Mauritania,
heading straight into the European theater. Before
we follow him across the Atlantic, we have to
look at a deeply personal milestone that happens
right before he leaves. J. Mullen Heslop married
Faye Stokes on May 1, 1944. In the Salt Lake
Temple. The timing of that is so incredibly tight.
He gets married on May 1, and he boards a troop
ship for a war zone on July 23. That is a span
of less than three months. Oh, wow. Consider
the psychological reality of the WWII as newlywed.
He is barking on a marriage, experiencing this
profound personal joy and commitment, only to
immediately have to pack his gear and sail toward
the unknown. It's heartbreaking. The emotional
whiplash of holding your new wife and then holding
your combat camera on a ship crossing the Atlantic,
it adds such a deeply human layer to him. He
isn't just a soldier fulfilling a duty. He is
a newlywed husband who has everything to lose.
And the environment he sails into is vast, chaotic,
and perilous. His deployment spans nine intensely
compressed months, from September 1944 to May
1945. The geographic footprint of his service
covers a massive swath of a war -torn continent,
Austria, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and Germany.
Nine months might not sound like a long time
in the context of an 88 -year life, but in a
combat zone during the final desperate, incredibly
violent of the Second World War, nine months
is a lifetime. Oh, absolutely. Every single day
is saturated with life or death stakes. You're
constantly moving, constantly exposed, and constantly
hyper aware. He is operating as part of Arnold
E. Samuelson's Combat Assignment Unit, hashtag
123. And the sheer variety of what he was ordered
to photograph during those nine months is staggering.
Very diverse assignment. He is documenting the
Counterintelligence Corps. He is photographing
titans of history like Charles de Gaulle and
Winston Churchill in a liberated Paris. And then
he is documenting the primal freezing brutality
of the Battle of the Bulge. The contrast between
those assignments requires an incredible mental
and technical flexibility. As a combat photographer,
you have to be a chameleon. Because the settings
are so different. Think about the Paris assignment.
The city has been liberated. You are capturing
Churchill and de Gaulle. These are polished historic
figures. You are framing a shot of statesmanship,
of triumph, of formal gravity. You're trying
to project strength. You are looking for the
iconic image that will run in papers across the
free world to project strength and victory. You
have time to consider the framing, to wait for
the right expression. Exactly. That is exactly
the luxury you have in that specific scenario.
But then, the environment shifts completely.
you are thrust into the Battle of the Bulge.
A total nightmare. You are no longer in a liberated
city. You are in the densely wooded Ardennes
forest in the dead of winter. It is one of the
coldest, most miserable, and bloodiest battles
the American forces fought in Europe. Yeah. You
are freezing in the snow, surrounded by artillery
fire, sheer desperation, and mass casualties.
The technical challenges of operating a camera
in that specific environment must have been a
nightmare. It borders on the impossible. Yeah.
How do you keep a mechanical camera functioning
in sub -zero temperatures? The lubricants inside
the lens and shutter mechanisms can literally
freeze solid. I hadn't even thought of that.
The film itself becomes brittle in the extreme
cold and can snap inside the camera if you wind
it too quickly. Your fingers lose all dexterity,
but you still have to manually adjust tiny aperture
rings and shutter speed dials. With frozen hands.
You still have to manually meter the light, reflecting
off the blinding white snow. which can easily
trick your exposure calculations. It's so technical.
He had to rely on every ounce of that foundational
training from the Utah winters, from the airport
fire, and from Hollywood to compartmentalize
the terror and execute the mechanics of photography
while people are dying around him. He had to
remain a technician in the middle of absolute
chaos. And that profound ability to bear witness,
to keep his eyes open, and his lens focused brings
us to the most harrowing and historically vital
chapter of his service. Yes. In May 1945, Heslop's
unit moves into Austria. It is there that he
photographs the liberation of the Ebensee concentration
camp. Ebbensie was a sub camp of the notorious
Mauthausen -Gusen concentration camp system,
used primarily for slave labor in underground
tunnel construction. This is a moment where the
history of the world pivots. Yeah. And he is
standing right there at the focal point tasked
with documenting it. J. Milan Heslop was one
of the first American photographers to document
evidence of Nazi crimes and the prisoners at
Ebbensie. He was among the very first to point
a lens at the reality of the Holocaust as it
was being uncovered by allied forces. We really
need to dwell on the emotional and psychological
toll of that reality. Put yourself in the boots
of a 21 year old from a rural farming community
in Utah. Just a kid, really? He is suddenly peering
through a small glass lens at the absolute worst
horrors that humanity is capable of inflicting
upon itself. He is seeing things that the human
mind is fundamentally not built to comprehend.
The starving prisoners, the unburied dead. The
mechanized, bureaucratic infrastructure of genocide.
And he is seeing it through a viewfinder, which
creates a strange psychological dynamic. What
do you mean? It simultaneously distances you
from the scene, but also forces you to focus
intensely on the gruesome details. His job wasn't
just to be horrified. He couldn't turn away.
He had a highly specific, mandated purpose. We
have to understand the strategic purpose of this
photography. When Heslop was standing in Evancy,
he wasn't capturing newsreels for morale. he
was capturing evidence. The combat photographers
assigned to these liberated camps were given
the agonizing task of securing the visual proof
of Nazi war crimes. Military commanders, specifically
leaders like General Eisenhower, knew immediately
that if these atrocities weren't meticulously
documented on film by official sources, future
generations might simply refuse to believe they
happened. Who saw that coming? The sheer scale
of the evil defied logic. They anticipated Holocaust
denialism before the war was even officially
over. They needed undeniable, irrefutable proof.
So Heslop's camera ceases to be just a recording
device. It becomes an instrument of justice.
But think about the devastating duality of that
role for the photographer. Yeah. To do his job,
to secure that essential evidence, he had to
forcefully detach himself emotionally in the
moment. He had to look at a scene of unimaginable
human suffering and his brain had to process
it. technically. Back to the mechanics. He had
to think, the light in this barracks is low.
I need to open the aperture. I need to hold the
camera perfectly steady for a slow shutter speed.
I need to frame this specific scene so the sheer
scale of the atrocity is visible. He's chilly.
He had to force himself to be a cold calculating
technician while standing in the epicenter of
human trauma. The strength required to not drop
the camera, to not just collapse under the weight
of it, but to keep shooting so the world would
know the truth. It is a monumental burden for
anyone, let alone someone barely out of his peens.
He had to be the eyes of the world when the world
would have rather looked away. He carried that
visual evidence back with him. After witnessing
the depths of human depravity, after surviving
the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation of
Ebb and Sea, the war ends. Finally. Hezlop returns
home to Utah. And his next move is a pivot that
I found incredibly revealing about how human
beings process trauma after returning from European
roles at Utah State Agricultural College. Which
we now know as Utah State University up in Logan.
Right. He graduates in June of 1948. And his
degree isn't in photojournalism. It's not in
history or political science. He gets a degree
in agriculture. It seems like a left turn. But
when you consider the psychological aftermath
of what he had just survived, it makes a profound
amount of sense. Why agriculture after being
at the center of global news? Consider where
he had just been and the nature of what he had
witnessed. He had spent nine months documenting
the literal destruction of the physical world
and the human body. The ultimate destruction.
You photographed bombed out cities. cratered
landscapes, frozen forests filled with casualties,
and the systematic mechanized destruction of
human life in the concentration camps. He witnessed
the world being torn apart. Yeah. Coming back
home to his roots. Remember, he grew up on a
farm in West Weber, and choosing to study agriculture
is a massive psychological reset. It's a return
to the soil. Exactly. What is the fundamental
nature of agriculture? It is the study of how
to grow things. It is about nurturing life from
the earth. It is about cultivation, sustainability,
and the quiet, predictable turning of the seasons.
After being surrounded by death, chaos, and the
darkest capabilities of mankind, putting his
hands in the dirt and focusing on the cycles
of life and growth must have been a deeply necessary
healing mechanism. That makes perfect sense.
It was a return to the foundational life -affirming
principles of his childhood before the war shattered
everything. But he doesn't abandon his calling.
After earning that degree in agriculture and
grounding himself, he returns to the camera.
He joins the Deseret News newspaper in Salt Lake
City, Utah. Right. His talent and experience
were obviously undeniable because shortly after
joining the staff, he is promoted to chief photographer
and he holds that position for 20 years. This
introduces another fascinating contrast in his
life's work. For two decades, he serves as the
chief photographer for a major daily newspaper
in Utah. He is capturing civilian life. A huge
shift from combat. He's photographing religious
gatherings, community events, local politics,
high school sports, state fairs. He is applying
the exact same high stakes, technical skills,
the situational awareness, the framing, the ability
to read lighting that he honed at Paramount Studios
and in the Ardennes forest. But he is applying
them to everyday peaceful. Community journalism
the camera that documented the Holocaust is now
documenting a ribbon -cutting ceremony. It is
a beautiful full circle moment He is using his
talents to reflect the daily rhythms of a peaceful
society back to itself And his career trajectory
didn't stop behind the lens. He eventually moves
to the editor's desk. From 1968 to 1976, he serves
as the editor of the Church News, a publication
distributed both as an insert in the Deseret
News and via mail to a broader global readership.
A very influential role. Following that, in 1976,
Heslup becomes the managing editor of the Deseret
News itself. He holds that critical managing
editor position from 1976 to 1981 and then serves
another stint from 1983 until 1980. This transition
from the darkroom to editorial leadership represents
a major evolution in how he interacts with the
public. For decades, he communicated almost exclusively
through images. He let the photographs convey
the narrative. But as a managing editor, he is
now guiding the written word. He is directing
the editorial vision of a major institution.
He's setting the agenda. He is deciding which
stories matter. how they should be covered, and
what the ultimate narrative is for a massive
readership base. It shows a man who has grown
from a front -line silent observer into a seasoned,
trusted community voice who actively shapes public
discourse. That concept of being a trusted voice
in the community extends far beyond the newsroom.
J. Milan Heslop had incredibly deep roots and
held extensive leadership roles within the LDS
Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
-day Saints. Very extensive. For listeners who
might not be familiar with the structure of the
LDS Church, the sheer volume of his service is
remarkable. He served as a bishop of the Salt
Lake 26th Ward. A bishop is essentially the unpaid
pastoral leader of a local congregation, requiring
massive amounts of time counseling members and
organizing local efforts. It is a heavy, emotionally
demanding role. He was also a counselor in the
stake presidency of the Salt Lake Pioneer Stake
and later the president of the Salt Lake Stake.
A stake oversees multiple local congregations,
so as stake president, he was managing the spiritual
and administrative affairs for thousands of people.
That's a lot of responsibility. He was a member
of the YMIA general board, which directed the
youth programs for the young men of the church
globally. He served as a regional representative,
advising local leaders across broader geographic
areas. It just kept going. He was the president
of the Chicago North Mission, relocating his
family to oversee hundreds of young missionaries.
And he served as a stake patriarch, a role given
to spiritually mature men to provide individualized,
deeply personal blessings to church members.
When you look at that list of callings, it paints
a portrait of a man entirely devoted to the service
of others. Think about how his worldview must
have been shaped by his twenties. Seriously.
A man who looked through a lens at the absolute
darkest shadows humanity can produce in 1945
Europe, returns home and dedicates the vast majority
of his adult life to spiritual leadership. He
spent his time counseling, guiding, and providing
moral framework to his community. It's an amazing
response to trauma. He witnessed the abyss. And
his response wasn't nihilism or despair. His
response was to spend the rest of his life tirelessly
building up his community, nurturing faith, and
serving his fellow man. It is a powerful testament
to his resilience. And at the absolute center
of all of that service was his family. He and
Faye Stokes, the woman he married just weeks
before shipping off to war, went on to have five
children together, Paul, Lynn, Scott. Anne and
Don. Big family. They even co -authored an autobiography
together, wonderfully titled Double Tree Adventure.
Which is a beautiful detail because it ensures
that his personal history, his family's intimate
story, is documented and preserved just as meticulously
as the grand sweeping world history he captured
with his Argus C3. That passion for documentation
clearly never left him because he also had a
prolific career as an author and historian. He
authored or co -authored several publications,
often collaborating with Del Van Orden. In 1973,
he published a book called From the Shadow of
Death, Stories of POWs. In 1971, he wrote Joseph
Fielding Smith, a prophet among the people documenting
the life of a prominent church leader. And in
1978, he published a highly practical book titled
How to Compile Your Family History. If you look
closely at those titles, there is a very clear
thematic throughline from The Shadow of Death.
Stories of POWs directly connects back to his
war experience. He saw the camps. He saw the
prisoners. He understood the trauma of captivity.
He carried that with him. This book demonstrates
a lingering empathy and a deep desire to give
voice to those who suffered in the shadows. He
didn't want their experiences to be forgotten.
Not at all. And then you look at how to compile
your family history. This connects directly to
his absolute obsession with preservation. Because
he knew the value of records. Whether he is preserving
the macro history of the world through a combat
camera or preserving the micro history of a single
family through genealogy and records, his driving
impulse is identical. Do not let the past disappear.
Document it. Keep the evidence. Understand where
you came from. He was also heavily involved in
the formation of the group that eventually became
the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation, dedicating
time to physically preserving locations of historical
significance to his faith. It all ties back to
keeping memory alive. Which brings us to the
legacy of his own memories, the archives of his
work. The photos he took in 1944 and 1945 aren't
just sitting in a box somewhere gathering dust.
They are actively preserving history today. The
institutional preservation of his work is monumental.
Brigham Young University, through its Saints
at War project, headed by Robert C. Freeman,
recognized the immense historical value of his
collection. They have digitized and made available
online more than 1 ,000 of Heslop's war photos
from World War II. Over a thousand images. Over
a thousand images, completely accessible to the
public, preserving exactly what he saw through
that viewfinder. And the institutional weight
of where his primary collections are held is
the ultimate validation of his life's work. His
World War II era photos are held in the permanent
collections of the United States National Archives
and the National Holocaust Museum. These are
the highest, most rigorous repositories of historical
truth in the nation. They are. When the National
Holocaust Museum needs to show the world the
undeniable reality of what happened at Evency,
when they need to counter modern denialism with
hard, visual, irrefutable proof, they rely on
the light that passed through J. Milan Heslop's
lens. His photographs are the foundational evidence
of our shared human history. J. Milan Heslop
passed away on July 29, 2011, in Salt Lake City,
Utah, at the age of 88. 88 years, a long, incredibly
full life. And if there's one thing his life
demonstrates, it is the profound power of evidence.
Absolutely. Heslop's journey shows us that the
act of looking, the physical act of refusing
to turn your eyes away from horror, of documenting
and archiving the truth, is an act of profound
courage. It is the civic duty of the highest
order. It really is. His legacy isn't just a
collection of old black and white photographs.
His legacy is permanently woven into how the
entire world remembers World War II and the Holocaust.
He made sure we could never say we didn't know.
It is an absolutely incredible scope for one
human life. From learning the messy chemistry
of developing prints with his dad on a Wes Webber
farm, to conquering his fear at an Ogden airport
fire, to training on Hollywood backlots with
cinematic masters. Quite the journey. From standing
in the freezing bloody snow of the Battle of
the Bulge, to looking through a viewfinder at
the unimaginable horrors of an Austrian concentration
camp. And then, taking all of that immense psychological
weight back home to Utah, choosing to build a
life as an agriculturalist, a community journalist,
an editor, a father, and a deeply committed spiritual
leader. He saw the very worst of the world and
spent the rest of his life contributing to the
very best of it. As we wrap up this deep dive,
I want to leave you with a final lingering thought
to mull over as you go about your day. Jamalyn
Heslop spent his youth looking through a small
piece of glass to capture the absolute darkest
shadows of the 20th century. But he spent the
rest of his life developing the light through
his family, his faith, and his community. So
the next time you pull out your phone to take
a quick photo to remember a moment, ask yourself,
what are you actively choosing to preserve for
the future? And what will that evidence say about
the world you lived in? That is certainly something
to think about the next time you tap that shutter
button. Thank you so much for joining us for
this deep dive into the extraordinary life of
J. Milan Hislop. It's a powerful reminder that
history isn't just a collection of dates and
facts. It is the view through the lens of individuals
who were brave enough to keep their eyes open.
Keep exploring, keep questioning, and we'll see
you next time.