Rebuilding life: refugees board trains in Germany; learn English
Creator(s)
- Sam Bryan and International Film Foundation
- Julien H. Bryan (Camera Operator)
- International Relief Organization (UNRRA) (Producer)
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
(Color) CUs, weaved crafts. 01:00:37 Displaced persons (DPs) on a transport sponsored by the IRO. DPs get off a truck with luggage and board a train. Handwriting on the side of the train says "US emigr. via Bremen." DPs lean out the windows of the train to look at the camera and talk to IRO officers. Uniformed men and women with badges stating "IRO", "US Committee", and "USCOM." DPs wave and the train departs. CU, luggage. 01:04:35 Blurry footage for three minutes with more takes of men, women, and children boarding the train. Wide views of the train station. 01:07:22 Two official men stand at a microphone next to the train and read from papers, a crowd listens. DPs hang out of the train windows and wave goodbye as the train departs. 01:08:42 A large group of adults sit outside and listen to an instructor. A young woman writes a Walt Whitman quote in English on a chalkboard. Small groups read books together outside. Multiple takes - seems staged. Young couple walks next to a building. DPs walk under a sign banner that reads "Church World Service Language Institute". 01:13:32 The students line up on the stairs outside the church as an instructor reads to them. 14:48 CU, another CWS sign, LAUF. CU, students reading. WS, CWS campus.
Note(s)
The address of the Church World Service building in Lauf (pictured at 14:48) is: Beethovenstraße 8, 91207 Lauf an der Pegnitz. The building was constructed in the 1930s for communication intelligence via radio and used for this purpose until 1945. For more historical information, refer to https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC5Q6XA_die-horchstelle-lauf?guid=a8e93a8f-2b39-43e0-a8e9-2fea1e51f6c0. Today, the building houses THW, a federal emergency management unit of volunteers. After the war, Julien Bryan returned to Europe under contract for the International Refugee Organization (IRO) and the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Organization (UNRRA). He was tasked with capturing images of Europe rebuilding. The finished films were intended for an international audience, often screened under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State. Transferred at 24 FPS Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives.
Subjects
- TRAINS
- REPATRIATION
- REFUGEES
- CHURCHES
- TRAIN STATIONS
- GERMANY
- BRYAN, JULIEN
- DISPLACED PERSONS (DP)
- EMIGRES/EMIGRATION
- LUGGAGE
- TEACHERS
- BADGES
Places
- Lauf, Germany
- Bremen, Germany
Genre
- Film
- Unedited.