Polish refugee children

Identifier
irn1000968
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 1999.324.1
  • RG-60.2141
Dates
1 Jan 1939 - 31 Dec 1944
Level of Description
Item
Languages
  • English
Source
EHRI Partner

Creator(s)

Biographical History

Eugene Cenkalski was a screenwriter and director. During the war, Cenkalski worked for the Polish government in England and the United States, producing and editing war film for Poland. After the war, he and his wife Christina settled In Lodz and collaborated on rebuilding the Polish film industry. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1209418.pdf

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

Title: "P.I.C. Films, Inc. Presents: Children in Refuge" "A film dedicated to children who suffer because of war" American children in classroom. Ruins in Warsaw (Julien Bryan footage from "Siege" of Warsaw in 1939). Relief packages for Polish children. National War Fund. Polish War Relief. American children reading thank you letters from Polish children. Scenes from refugee camps in Iran, Palestine, South Africa, Kenya, military school in Scotland. Unique shots include footage of emaciated boys in tattered clothing (at 01:11:13 and 01:11:27). These are Polish children deported to the Soviet Union during World War II.

Note(s)

  • Musical score by: Wlyadyslaw Eiger Photographed by: E. Francis Thompson (USA) Julien Bryan (Poland) British Army Film Unit (Kenya) Polish Army Film Unit (Egypt and Scotland) Pathe News (Persia and South Africa) Many scenes already exist on Film ID 2267, Stories RG-60.2137, 2138, 2139, 2140. For more information about the Polish Information Center (New York), see the collection of records at the Hoover Institution, located online at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2k4016kh/admin/#scopecontent-1.7.4.

Subjects

Places

Genre

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.