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.
Scenes from the Giesche Zinc mine and refinery in Katowice, Poland, circa 1936. VS, INT near the furnaces, women sorting ore before it is smelted, the conveyor belt from the mine shaft, the molten ore being poured into molds. 01:02:06 Workers' jackets hanging from the ceiling of the factory near the light fixtures. EXT, LS, workers exiting the factory, some get on their bicycles others leave on foot. Many workers are young, and smile for the camera. INT, workers filling the molds used for the molten zinc ore. EXT, LS of the countryside in south central Poland. VS of the rural village and the inhabitants. Woman in traditional central Polish folk dress, carrying a basket of flowers walks along a dirt road. EXT, LS, zinc refinery smokestacks are seen in the BG from behind a row of small homes, most likely the factory worker's homes. Gardens and fallow fields are visible in the FG. EXT, LS, unknown location, a large brick multi-story building on a street corner, ducks are walking about on the lawn in front of the building. MCU, children look out a window from the brick building and catch the gaze of the camera. EXT, LS, zinc refinery, ducks are visible waddling across the lawn in the BG.
Zinc refinery in Katowice, Poland, circa 1936