Relocation of displaced persons

Identifier
irn1003630
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 2003.213
  • RG-60.4178
Dates
1 Jan 1946 - 31 Dec 1946
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

INT, processing center for IRO (International Relief Organization). Families line up at desks where young men and women review their identity papers, create new documents, and arrange for them to emigrate to North America (Canada, United States), and various countries in South America. They are fingerprinted as well. VS, CUs of the refugees talking to the IRO workers. Expressions on the faces of refugees range from terrified to elated. 01:03:23:28 CU of a set of identity papers being created for a young woman, and her fingerprints being imprinted on the back of the paper. The same action is now viewed in a MS, where the young woman's family is visible as well. Footage has been staged for the camera in order to capture the entire process.

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.