Pair of lobby cards for the film “Ulica Graniczna” (1949)
Extent and Medium
.1: Height: 13.000 inches (33.02 cm) | Width: 17.000 inches (43.18 cm)
.2: Height: 13.000 inches (33.02 cm) | Width: 17.000 inches (43.18 cm)
Creator(s)
- Ken Sutak (Compiler)
- Film Polski (Production Company)
- Cinematografica Coloso S.A. (Distributor)
Biographical History
The Cinema Judaica Collection consists of more than 1,200 objects relating to films about World War II and the Holocaust as well as Jewish, Israeli, and biblical subjects, from 1923 to 2000, from the United States, Europe, Israel, Canada, Mexico, and Argentina. The collection was amassed by film memorabilia collector Ken Sutak, to document Holocaust-and Jewish-themed movies of the World War II era and the postwar years. The collection includes posters, lobby and photo cards, scene stills, pressbooks, trade ads, programs, magazines, books, VHS tapes, DVDS, and 78 rpm records. Sutak organized these materials into two groups, “Cinema Judaica: The War Years, 1939–1949” and “Cinema Judaica: The Epic Cycle, 1950–1972” and, in conjunction with the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Museum (now the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum in New York), organized exhibitions on these two themes in 2007 and 2008. Sutak subsequently authored companion books with the same titles.
Archival History
The lobby cards were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018 by Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur.
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur
Scope and Content
Pair of Mexican lobby cards poster for the film, “Ulica Graniczna” (“Border Street”), originally released in Poland in 1949. Lobby cards are promotional materials placed in theater lobby windows to highlight specific movie scenes, rather than the broader themes often depicted on posters. “Ulica Graniczna” centers on several families in a tenement building in Warsaw, and features two Jewish children who are forced to relocate with their families into the Warsaw Ghetto. The film concludes with a dramatization of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first on-screen representation of the event. During production in the late 1940s, increasing communist and antisemitic sentiment in Poland led the director to relocate to Czechoslovakia, where the film was completed. The intended 1948 premiere was delayed, after a Polish state-run committee deemed the film anti-Polish and lacking characters in line with a communist ideology. It was only released after revisions were made that downplayed Poland’s role in the Holocaust. Rather than focusing on the Jewish victims, Poland’s communist authorities wanted to emphasize the struggle that the Polish people shared with their Jewish neighbors. The final version of “Ulica Graniczna” shows a variety of Polish attitudes about the Holocaust and ends ambiguously, emphasizing to the audience that racism and persecution is not over. This object is one of more than 1,200 objects in the Cinema Judaica Collection of materials related to films about World War II and the Holocaust as well as Jewish, Israeli, and biblical themes.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions on access
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Restrictions on use. Copyright status is unknown.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
.1 Lobby card printed on rectangular off-white cardstock, with a narrow white margin on all four sides, and an illustration in the center. In the top left of the card are two lines of advertising copy in yellow and white, and the Spanish film title in large red-and-yellow text. On the left edge is a partial green and yellow illustration of a Nazi soldier holding a rifle and wearing a black, white, and red armband. To the right of the illustration are three small segments of text in white and yellow. In the center, underneath the film title, is a canted, rectangular, black-and-white, photographic image with a white border on all four sides. The image depicts a man from the waist up, with his hands resting on a thick railing. He is wearing a white armband with a Star of David, and has a submachine gun hanging from a strap around his neck. Beneath this image is a line of film credits in white. On the right edge of the lobby card is an illustration of two children, a boy with dark hair and a girl with a long, blonde braid, depicted from the neck up. In the corner below them is a smaller scale illustration of two yellow-and-red explosions beneath a tattered white flag emblazoned with a blue Star of David. On the back, there is transfer ink from another image. Depicted: Stefan Sródka as Natan Sziuliu, Jerzy Zlotnicki as David Libermann, Maria Broniewska as Jadzia Bialkówna .2 Lobby card printed on rectangular off-white cardstock, with a narrow white margin on all four sides, and an illustration in the center. In the top left of the card are two lines of advertising copy in yellow and white, and the Spanish film title in large red-and-yellow text. On the left edge is a partial green and yellow illustration of a Nazi soldier holding a rifle and wearing a black, white, and red armband. To the right of the illustration are three small segments of text in white and yellow. In the center, underneath the film title, is a canted, rectangular black-and-white photographic image with a white border on all four sides. The image depicts two Nazi officers on either side of a Jewish man wearing a kippah. The Jewish man is looking wide-eyed at the officer on the left, who has his hand on the man’s chin, directing his gaze. Beneath this image is a line of film credits in white. On the right edge of the lobby card is an illustration of two children, a boy with dark hair and a girl with a long braid, depicted from the neck up. In the corner below them is a smaller scale illustration of two yellow-and-red explosions beneath a tattered white flag emblazoned with a blue Star of David. On the back, there is light transfer ink from another image and a handwritten series of letters and numbers. Depicted: Wladyslaw Godik as Grandfather Libermann, Jerzy Zlotnicki as David Libermann, Maria Broniewska as Jadzia Bialkówna, others unidentified
.2 back, top left, handwritten, pencil : [crossed out] C3856 / h0418
People
- Pichelski, Jerzy, 1903-1963.
- Fijewski, Tadeusz.
- Ford, Aleksander.
- Broniewska, Maria.
Subjects
- History in motion pictures.
- Polish people in motion pictures.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in motion pictures.
- Antisemitism in motion pictures.
- Foreign language films.
- Heroes in motion pictures.
- Captivity in motion pictures.
- Jews in motion pictures.
- Poland.
- Mexico.
- Warsaw (Poland)--History--Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943.
Genre
- Posters
- Display cards.
- Object