Berlin street scenes: park bench marked for Jews only
Creator(s)
- Julien H. Bryan (Camera Operator)
- Julien H. Bryan (Director)
- Library of Congress - Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (MBRS)
Biographical History
Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. Bryan traveled widely taking 35mm film that he sold to motion picture companies. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former USSR. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland, including Jewish areas of Warsaw and Krakow and anti-Jewish signs in Germany. His footage appeared in March of Time theatrical newsreels. His photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He was in Warsaw in September 1939 when Germany invaded and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of WWII. He recorded this experience in both the book Siege (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940) and the short film Siege (RKO Radio Pictures, 1940) nominated for an Academy Award in 1940. In 1946, Bryan photographed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in postwar Europe.
Scope and Content
Street in Berlin: uniformed Nazis salute guard at door. Edge of park at Olivaerplatz, wooden benches below stone columns & arbors, child. CU of signs: Top: Citizens are asked to keep their dogs on leash. Bottom: "Die gelben Baenke sind fuer Jueden." [The yellow benches are for Jews.] (One shot of the sign "for Jews" is upsidedown in the original film.) Various people sit on other benches in the small park. Different camera angles of park, none showing the actual sign in context. Note: J.Bryan's film lecture "Germany 1937" identifies this location as "Oliviaplatz" which is, in fact, Olivaerplatz, near Kurfuerstendamm and Kostanzestrasse.
Note(s)
See also Film ID 3012 USHMM Bryan Collection. Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives.
Subjects
- SIGNS/POSTERS
- JEWS
- GERMANS
- SOLDIERS/MILITARY (GERMAN)
- CIVILIANS
- PARKS
- ANTISEMITISM
- GERMANY
- WOMEN
- BRYAN, JULIEN
Places
- Berlin, Germany
Genre
- Film
- Unedited.