Relocation of displaced persons

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. 

Relocation of displaced persons 

EXT, relocation of DPs and war refugees. Filmed in Linz [see US army truck with Linz painted on the back.] VS, camp from various angles. LS establishing shot of a large crowd of displaced persons- men, women, and children, milling about outside of a barracks-like building (processing center). MCU, refugees in smaller groups, talking to each other as they wait for entrance to the building. Some look directly at the camera, several avoid it. These are many groups of extended families. Julien Bryan's notes do not indicate the ethnicity, nationality, or religious preference of the DPs, but they are probably a mix of ethnic Germans, Poles, and Jews. There are several young children and babies in the group, as well as an amputee, and even a small dog. At the door to the processing center a man with an armband slowly lets small groups of people enter as he eats an apple and talks to another young man. 

Detailed preservation notes from the film lab are available in Film and Video department files. Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives.