Robert Wolman left Warsaw for the United States in 1924. He married and established a photography studio in Akron, Ohio. In 1932 he returned to Warsaw for a visit and shot film footage of the trip. On the trip, Wolman visited his father, Benjamin Wolman, and his second wife, Sarah Rubinstein, and their children Esther and Bronka. They also had a son, Yulenka, who is not in the film footage. Benjamin, Sarah, Bronka and Yulenka all reportedly died in Treblinka. Esther survived and told Robert Wolman's descendants that she fled to the USSR shortly before it invaded Poland and spent the war in labor camps in Tashkent and Siberia, where she met her future husband. Robert Wolman died in 1974.
Jacek Nowakowski provided location identification. This film was preserved with a 2010 National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) cash grant.
The camera pans across a bustling street scene, including lots of people, streetcars (one is marked with the number 21), buildings, and a horse-drawn buggy. The large building which dominates the background is the Grand Theater. The streetcar runs along Senatorska Street. An older Jewish man makes faces at the camera and several younger men wrestle with him briefly. Another elderly Jew smiles. He is instructed by the young men around him to look at the camera. 01:01:11 More crowded street scenes in Nalewki Street in the Jewish quarter. Many shop signs visible, including one sign with Hebrew lettering (Yiddish) at 01:02:08. Young boys mug for the camera. Nice portrait of an elderly Jewish man at 01:02:52. 01:02:59 People exit what is probably the Mirowska Hala covered market. Shots of outdoor market stalls adjacent to the Mirkowska Hala. A Jew exits a door and walks quickly down the street. The screen fades to white then to black from 01:03:41 to 01:04:07 and comes back in on a shot of the donors' grandfather, Benjamin Wolman, standing in front of some trees. Benjamin Wolman smiles and talks to the cameraman, who is his son (see biographical notes field). The next shots show Benjamin Wolman's second wife Sarah Rubinstein and their two daughters, Esther and Bronka. Various shots of husband and wife and daughters. Benjamin Wolman and Sarah Rubinstein stare into the camera and then start smiling and laughing. The last scenes were shot on Robert Wolman's trip back to the United States. One shot shows a sailor posing by the ship rail and the rest of the scenes show the ship and the ocean.
Prewar Warsaw: street and family scenes