Train travelling to Warsaw, Poland 1939

Identifier
irn1003530
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 2003.214
  • RG-60.4009
Dates
1 Jan 1939 - 31 Dec 1939
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

Crowded train platform, several bourgeois looking families are boarding the trains, some soldiers are also on the platform, some help the women and children board. They seem to be from a mountaineering regiment, they carry rifles, and wear rounded felt caps with feathers in them. Another shot, passengers on board the train reach out the window to receive hunks of bread from people selling it from baskets on the platform. Several children are running around near the platform, some look curiously at the camera. 01:02:36:29 A group of young men and young women sitting in the grass and socializing near the train platform, They are smoking, smiling, laughing, etc, one of the men has a newspaper and several of the others are leaning in around him to read the article. MCU on the paper, all in Polish, and difficult to make out the words, another close-up on the "Express Wikezonry", the man points to the last article with a title that reads: "Americans take position of neutrality, other articles on the page discuss London and Warsaw 01:02:55:03 Mores shots of people serving drinks from the train platform to the passengers. Soldiers stand around drinking as well. This is shot from the train- so Bryan and his cameraman are on the train en route to somewhere, or they hopped on the train to take the shots from this point of view- there seem to be several soldiers on board the train. People disembark the train in what seems to be a deserted field.

Note(s)

  • A passage from Julien Bryan's book "Siege" published in 1940 upon his return from Poland indicates that this footage was shot while Bryan was enroute to Warsaw from further East in Romania, in the early days of September 1939 just as the Germans were reachng the Polish borders. 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.