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.
Detailed preservation notes from the film lab are available in Film and Video department files. Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives.
Poignant shot of two little boys, one little girl, and one woman with her head bandaged holding an infant in her arms sitting on the street surrounded by rubble, the children are barefoot, and they look frightened and confused. This scene was shot in the immediate aftermath of a German air attack over Warsaw. MLS the two young boys dragging a chair, down the street full of rubble. 01:05:48:22: MS residents milling about on the street, sitting on chairs, surrounded by the few belongings they have left- several young women, one man. Clear shot of more destruction at 01:05:55:29 man in suit rounding the corner, passes by a soldier, the woman with her head bandaged is carrying a baby in her arms. CU of a brick oven that remained intact. Camera pans to broken plates and cups in the rubble. END on CU of destroyed household belongings in this rubble.
German siege of Warsaw, Poland, Sept. 1939