German siege of Warsaw, Poland 1939

Identifier
irn1003419
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 2003.214
  • RG-60.3983
Dates
1 Jan 1940 - 31 Dec 1940
Level of Description
Item
Languages
  • Silent
Source
EHRI Partner

Creator(s)

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

Dead woman with a basket over her head. MS, two women and one man approach this woman's body when she is still laying face down in the dirt, they roll her over, she is now lying face up, the basket is next to her head (I don't believe it has been placed over her head yet), and then they walk on. The man looks back at the camera a few times after passing the dead woman's body. Cut to MS, three women in the field digging for potatoes, CU of an injured woman. Cut to MS, refugees of the bombing teaming around their destroyed neighborhood, the site seems to be the former cemetery that is also mentioned in Julien Bryan's book "Siege" (1940). MS, near a statue of Jesus, two women pump water from a fountain that is still working. LS, high angle, from the interior of a bombed out building, we can see residents standing in the rubble outside the window. 01:13:14:05 Bryan sits among the rubble talking to those who have lost their home, one woman is fixing her hair, another speaks with Bryan and reaches over to offer him a potato, he thanks her and smiles. More shots of men cleaning up rubble, digging ditches, etc. 01:14:16:20 Good sequence of shots of Bryan posing with a larger group of victims of the bombing raids, all assembled in the middle of the rubble. Long CU on an older woman who retells her part of the story, cut to the two young boys reading Mickey Mouse comics (JB mentions this in the book "Siege", (1940) as well). Return to a MS of the elderly woman featured in an earlier shot in this sequence, looking a bit bewildered, and milling about in front of a destroyed building with several other women and children around her, a young girl in a sailor style outfit comes up on screen right, and begins to look directly at the camera.

Note(s)

  • Detailed preservation notes from the film lab are available in Film and Video department files. Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives.

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.