Robert Gessner papers

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 

Robert Gessner papers 

box 1 

Photographs taken by American photographer Robert Gessner documenting Jewish communities in Europe and the rise of antisemitism in the 1930s. Includes photographs taken in the United States, Palestine, England, France, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. European photographs probably date to his 1934 visit. Collection also includes some commercial picture postcards. 

Robert Gessner (1907-1968) was a Jewish American screenwriter and author born in Escanaba, MI. He obtained a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1929 and a M.A. from Columbia University in 1930. He started teaching at New York University in 1930. He traveled to several European countries in 1934 and shot the photographs and film footage donated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum by his son, Peter. Gessner wrote a book about his journeys, titled"Some of My Best Friends are Jew" in 1936, in which he explicitly warned of the Nazi threat in Europe. He married Doris Lindeman on May 27, 1938 and had two children, Peter and Stephen. Mr. Gessner was a screen playwright and the author of several additional books, including"Massacr" (1931);"Broken Arro" (1933);"Treaso" (1944);"Youth is the Tim" (1945), and"The Moving Image, A Guide to Cinematic Literac" (1968). He was a pioneer educator in motion pictures as an art form. Gessner founded the Motion Picture Department at NYU in 1941, the first four-year film curriculum leading to a B.A. degree in motion picture studies in the United States.