Abstract

Like the previous selection of film clips, this compilation of film clips capture “everyday” life, but this time from the perspective of those—in some cases Americans—who witnessed the vicissitudes of Jewish life in Nazi Germany and prewar Europe. This selection of amateur films features an American tourist’s films of recently annexed Austria in 1938, showing the boycott of Jewish shops and support for the "Anschluss". It is followed by a short clip documenting the arrival of a Kindertransport (children’s transport) from Germany to France in July 1939. Next, we see photographer and documentarian Julien Bryan’s footage of the Goldschmidt school for Jewish children in Berlin in 1937 and of his visits to the Jewish quarters of Warsaw and Cracow in 1936. Finally, there is a short clip from private film footage shot by a family of Polish-born Jews who had emigrated to the United States and were visiting their former home town of Nasielsk, documenting Jewish life there in 1938.

Private Home Videos II: Jewish Life in Prewar Europe (1936–39)

Source

Source: RG-60.4554. Title: Boycott of Jewish shops. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Stan Baker.
RG-60.1340. Title: German Jewish refugee boys arrive at Quincy-sous-Senart. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Christian de Monbrison.
RG-60.0373. Title: Students of private Jewish school (Goldschmidt School), Berlin. Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Library of Congress.
RG-60.4116. Title: Jewish quarters Krakow and Warsaw 1936; Jewish teens. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Julien Bryan Archive.
RG-60.4826. Title: Jewish Quarter of Nasielsk. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Glenn Kurtz.