Krakow's Jewish quarter: shops, merchants
MCU, street corner of the Jewish quarter in Krakow, a women in contemporary dress and three Jewish men peek out from behind the shoulder of a man with his back to the camera. Sign across the street for a merchant's shop:"SALOMON DIAMAN". Several shots of Jewish men in orthodox garb, with beards, standing on street corners talking and suspiciously watching the camera, one covers his face, and they move along.
Detailed preservation notes from the film lab are available in Film and Video department files. Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives. Parts of this story can be seen in Story 3998, Film ID 3004; Story 4116, Film ID 3005; and Story 765, Film ID 507.
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.