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.
Woman selling newspapers on the street. Cut to scene behind the American Embassy where, according to Julien Bryan's book"Sieg", all the Americans were during the Siege. Scene of Americans practicing for heading underground during an attack, American flag in the ground, sand bags, etc. They are trying to string the flag so that it will somehow be visible from the air so that the Germans will not bomb them. Several of the men are wearing armbands. VS, sandbagging the American embassy in Warsaw. The men continue to point towards the sky, as they head underground, one man takes still photos. Another flag is draped on the roof of the building to warn the German planes. 01:08:24:00 Scene of destruction, birds take flight, INTs of the Catholic hospital, the nurses and mothers with newborn babies leaving the destroyed building. A baby carriage remains perched precariously on the edge of a bomb induced crater on the hospital grounds. VS of the nurses and nuns demonstrating the damage that was done to the hospital. 01:09:04:10 Chaos on the streets of Warsaw. Trucks full of sandbags, foot soldiers on patrol, refugees all about, piles of stones from destroyed buildings, men digging, more refugees crossing the Paderewski Bridge, soldiers continue to recruit able-bodied men that they find in the crowds of people coming over the bridge. MCU, On the bridge, a family with all their belongings, everyone seems to be smiling. Camera pans the group of refugees assembled there on the bridge, still in MCU, good CU of mother and daughter, then just of the little girl, staring intently at the camera, back to mother, then they pull out pictures of the little girl as a baby- they have all their possession with them. A man with a WWI military medal in MCU (part of the same family) more shots of this family- they have everything loaded on a bicycle. Soldiers patrol the bridge. MCU a woman carries a chicken, several other refugees. VS of people on the bridge, then more destruction along railway lines, and people swarming out of their neighborhoods.
German siege of Warsaw, Poland, Sept. 1939