Street scenes in prewar Warsaw
Bryan’s cameraman Jules Bucher said that arriving in Warsaw in 1936 was “something of a culture shock” after working in Russia for several summers.
Bryan’s cameraman Jules Bucher said that arriving in Warsaw in 1936 was “something of a culture shock” after working in Russia for several summers.
Thirty years after filming in Krakow, Julien Bryan noted that “the shots of the ghetto are remarkable historical material.”
Julien Bryan was present in Warsaw when General Edward Śmigły-Rydz became Field Marshal of Poland.
Thousands of participants and spectators gathered at Zeppelin Field for the 1937 Reich Party Day in Nuremberg.
In a 1938 lecture on Nazi Germany, Bryan said, “To my mind, in another five years there will be very few of these five hundred thousand Jews left alive.”
In Munich, Julien Bryan documented the spirited Nazi assault on modern art when he visited the infamous and popular Degenerate Art exhibition.
Bryan noted the extent to which the Nazis organized propaganda for children, saying “Young Germans are being constantly schooled in the superiority of the German race…”
Julien Bryan filmed day and night for two weeks in September 1939, documenting Warsaw’s destruction by the Germans: “I was impressed by Warsaw’s will to survive.”
Julien Bryan wrote, “Somehow it seemed brutal to intrude upon the privacy of these terror stricken people, but I did my job. I was making a documentary record of a thing that was really happening.”
After the war, Julien Bryan returned to Europe on a film project for the International Refugee Organization and the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Organization.
Bryan continued his mission to document the lives of ordinary men under extraordinary circumstances after the war with this film observation of Jews rebuilding religious life in Russia.
