Julien Bryan

File:Julien Bryan - Ambulance 646 - 01.jpg"]]

Bryan was the son of an elder in the Presbyterian Church with a long missionary tradition.{{cite web | title =Julien & Sam Bryan and the International Film Foundation | publisher = International Film Foundation | date = 2010-11-30 | url = http://www.afana.org/iff.htm}} At seventeen after graduating from high school, he volunteered to serve in the American Field Service for the French Army in World War I, driving an ambulance in Verdun and the Argonne,[https://web.archive.org/web/20130216170722/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Capturing-Warsaw-at-the-Dawn-of-World-War-II.html/ Capturing Warsaw at the Dawn of World War II] Edwards, Mike (November 2010) Smithsonian Magazine via Internet Archive. Retrieved October 28, 2021.{{cite web | title= United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | date= 2010-11-30 | url= http://resources.ushmm.org/inquery/uia_query.php?noframes=x&page_len=25&max_docs=all&db_group=ushmm&db_name=photos&db_name=wlc&db_name=fvarchive&db_name=website&query=47219&query_append=type%28photo+or+histphoto+or+instphoto%29 | url-status= dead | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110717001838/http://resources.ushmm.org/inquery/uia_query.php?noframes=x&page_len=25&max_docs=all&db_group=ushmm&db_name=photos&db_name=wlc&db_name=fvarchive&db_name=website&query=47219&query_append=type(photo+or+histphoto+or+instphoto) | archive-date= 2011-07-17 }} and wrote a book Ambulance 464 about this experience illustrated by his photographs.[https://web.archive.org/web/20131016081745/https://ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Bryan/464TC.html "AMBULANCE 464" Encore des Blessés] Bryan, Julien (1918). New York City, Macmillan Publishers via Internet Archive. {{ISBN|1-110-81075-X}}. Retrieved October 28, 2021.

He graduated from Princeton University in 1921 and finished Union Theological Seminary, though he chose not to be ordained as a minister. Afterwards he directed YMCA in Brooklyn, NY

At this time Bryan started traveling abroad taking photographs, making films and writing travelogues along the way. He funded his travels by giving slideshow lectures about countries he visited and by selling his films to various companies including ERPI. Many of the films from those travels can be found in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive.{{cite web | title = Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive | publisher = United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | date = 2010-11-30 | url = http://resources.ushmm.org/film/search/simple_search.php?Keywords=BRYAN%2C+JULIEN }} {{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} Those human-interest movies chronicle travels through China, Caucasus and Georgia (1933), Soviet Union (1930 and 1935), Poland (1936), Germany (1937), Switzerland and the Netherlands (1939). His films and photographs from Nazi Germany chronicled party rallies, daily life on the streets, anti-Jewish propaganda and Nazi leaders. They were incorporated into two ’’March of Time’’ films. His slide lectures were held in concert halls including Carnegie Hall. Bryan shot over 25,000 feet of film for Inside Nazi Germany, one of the first American anti-Nazi films.{{sfn|Waldman|2008|pp=13}}

File:Polish victim of German Luftwaffe action 1939.jpg

File:Julien Bryan - Expres Wieczorny - 50900.jpg

Bryan learned about the German invasion of Poland on September 3 while traveling by train to Warsaw. He arrived in Warsaw on September 7 carrying his Leica still camera, Bell & Howell movie camera and 6000 feet of film, just as all foreigners, diplomats and government officials were fleeing the capital. He contacted mayor of Warsaw Stefan Starzynski who provided him with a car, guide and interpreter Stefan Radlinski and permit to travel and photograph across Warsaw. In two weeks between September 7 and September 21, he managed to take hundreds of still photographs including color Kodachromes and 5000 feet of motion picture film documenting the Siege of Warsaw and the bombing of the city by German Luftwaffe. He recalled:

{{blockquote|As we drove by a small field at the edge of town we were just a few minutes too late to witness a tragic event, the most incredible of all. Seven women had been digging potatoes in a field. There was no flour in their district, and they were desperate for food. Suddenly two German planes appeared from nowhere and dropped two bombs only two hundred yards away on a small home. Two women in the house were killed. The potato diggers dropped flat upon the ground, hoping to be unnoticed. After the bombers had gone, the women returned to their work. They had to have food. But the Nazi fliers were not satisfied with their work. In a few minutes they came back and swooped down to within two hundred feet of the ground, this time raking the field with machine-gun fire. Two of the seven women were killed. The other five escaped somehow. While I was photographing the bodies, a little ten-year old girl came running up and stood transfixed by one of the dead. The woman was her older sister. The child had never before seen death and couldn't understand why her sister would not speak to her...The child looked at us in bewilderment. I threw my arm about her and held her tightly, trying to comfort her. She cried. So did I and the two Polish officers who were with me...{{Cite web|url=https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1154418|title=A ten-year-old Polish girl named Kazimiera Mika mourns the death of her older sister, who was killed in a field in Warsaw during a German air raid. - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}}}

In 2009, the grown-up girl, Kazimiera Mika, spoke about the event and said she was 12 at the time.{{Cite web|url=http://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/1,54420,6986800,Bohaterowie_zdjec_sprzed_70_lat.html|title = Wyborcza.pl}} They first reunited in 1958, when Bryan returned to Warsaw. (She married and lived to the age of 93).

Bryan is credited as the only foreign journalist in Warsaw at that time.{{cite web|author=Julien Bryan |title=Poland in 1939 and in 1959 |url=http://www.polishnews.com/artykuly/war.shtml |archive-url=https://archive.today/20051028204448/http://www.polishnews.com/artykuly/war.shtml |url-status=dead |archive-date=2005-10-28 |publisher=Look magazine |date=September 1959 }} Through Polish Radio he also made an appeal to the American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help civilians targeted by enemy bombers.{{cite web | title = Julien Bryan (1899-1974) | url = http://www.aktyka.com/wrzesien1939/?p=p_132 | publisher = aktyka.com | language = pl | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110707102151/http://www.aktyka.com/wrzesien1939/?p=p_132 | archive-date = 2011-07-07 }} During his stay in Warsaw he lived in the abandoned Consulate of the United States.

He left Warsaw on September 21 after Germans declared a cease-fire to allow citizens of neutral countries to depart by train through East Prussia. In Königsberg fearing confiscation of his material he decided to smuggle out his already developed films. He managed to hide some of his films in souvenir gas mask containers collected by a fellow traveler from the US, and by one account he hid some movies by wrapping them around his torso.

After arriving in New York in the fall of 1939 Bryan published some of his photographs. Life magazine printed 15 of his images in the October 23 issue{{cite magazine |author=Julien Bryan |title=Documentary Record of the Last Days of Once Proud Warsaw |date=1939 |magazine=Life magazine |pages= 73–77 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AEIEAAAAMBAJ&q='Documentary%20Record%20of%20the%20Last%20Days%20of%20Once%20Proud%20Warsaw%22&pg=PA73}} and Look Magazine published another 26 in the December 5 issue.{{cite journal |author=Julien Bryan |title=Can Hitler's Lightning War Do This To England. |date=1939 |journal=Look Magazine |pages= 10–13}} Bryan produced in 1940 as a short documentary film Siege, released by RKO Radio Pictures.{{cite web | title = Siege (1940) | url = https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033050/ | website = IMDb }} and wrote a book with the same title. The film was nominated for an Academy Award the following year for Best Short Subject, One-reel.{{cite web | title = Awards for Siege (1940) | url = https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033050/awards | website = IMDb }} Although the film Siege is only 10 minutes long, Julien Bryan presented Franklin Delano Roosevelt his 80 minute long film from fighting Warsaw.{{cite web |last=Urzykowski |first=Tomasz |date=2010-11-22 |title=Robił zdjęcia w stolicy. Miały pokazać okrucieństwo wojny |url=http://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/1,95190,8695244,Robil_zdjecia_w_stolicy__Mialy_pokazac_okrucienstwo.html |website=warszawa.wyborcza.pl}}

In 1940 Bryan was hired by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA) to make a series of 23 educational movies on Latin American culture and customs. Afterwards State Department hired him to create another five movies about the US.

File:Polish kid in the ruins of Warsaw September 1939.jpg|A still from one of Bryan's chronicles of the Siege of Warsaw

File:Warsaw district Praga 1939.jpg|Warsaw after German bombardment

File:Julien Bryan - Siege.ogv

File:Tablica upamiętniająca Annę Kostewicz i Juliena Bryana przy ul. Ostroroga 35 w Warszawie 2023.jpg

Bryan returned to Poland in 1946. As part of an official UNRRA delegation he revisited Gdańsk and Warsaw. His Kodachrome footage of recently destroyed Gdańsk is probably the first post-war film shot in that city.{{cite journal | author =dor | date =April 2013 | title =Nieznany kolorowy film z Gdańska z 1946. Uratowany przez fundację Spielberga | journal =Gazeta Wyborcza | issue =25–04–2013 | url =http://trojmiasto.gazeta.pl/trojmiasto/56,35612,13796650,Nieznany_kolorowy_film_z_Gdanska_z_1946__Uratowany.html#LokKrajTxt | language =pl | url-status =dead | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20140502002047/http://trojmiasto.gazeta.pl/trojmiasto/56,35612,13796650,Nieznany_kolorowy_film_z_Gdanska_z_1946__Uratowany.html#LokKrajTxt | archive-date =2014-05-02 }}{{cite news |title=Kolorowy Gdańsk z 1946 roku. "To prawdziwe odkrycie" |author=Marek Osiecimski |url=http://www.tvn24.pl/pomorze,42/kolorowy-gdansk-z-1946-roku-to-prawdziwe-odkrycie,320634.html |agency=TVN 24 |publisher=tvn24.pl |location=Gdańsk |date=2013-04-23|trans-title=Colour 1946 footage of Gdańsk: It's a revelation |language=pl}}

In 1958 Bryan revisited Poland and published one hundred of his 1939 photographs from Warsaw. Working with daily newspaper Express Wieczorny they launched a big campaign, with a page of the 1939 pictures in each issue, and the words: "Do you recognize yourself, your relatives, your house and street? The Express is helping American photographer Julien Bryan to find the heroes of his film from besieged Warsaw in 1939." Readers who recognized anything in his pictures were asked to come to the newspaper's offices with that information. That way he met and recorded stories of many people in his photographs. He wrote about his experiences in Warsaw: 1939 siege, 1959 Warsaw Revisited published in 1959 in Poland.

In 1945, Bryan started the International Film Foundation (IFF) and for the remainder of his career he made short documentary films for the school market. Son Sam Bryan joined IFF in 1960. Bryan died in 1974, just two months after receiving a medal from the Polish government for his still photography. After his death IFF was operated by Sam. In 2003 Sam Bryan donated both his father's still and motion picture footage of wartime Europe to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Many of his works are currently held by the Library of Congress and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive In 2006 Siege was named to the National Film Registry of the US by the Librarian of Congress as "a unique, horrifying record of the dreadful brutality of war".{{cite web | title = Librarian of Congress Adds Home Movie, Silent Films and Hollywood Classics to Film Preservation List | publisher = Library of Congress | date = December 27, 2006 | url = https://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2006/06-234.html }} It was also nominated for an Academy Award.

His World War II experiences in Warsaw were fictionalized in the 1978 film ... Gdziekolwiek jesteś Panie Prezydencie (Wherever you may be, Mr. President) by {{Interlanguage link|Andrzej Trzos-Rastawiecki|pl}}. The role of unnamed "American journalist" based on Julien Bryan was portrayed by Jack Recknitz.{{cite web | author=Wacław Świeżyński | title=... Gdziekolwiek jesteś Panie Prezydencie | publisher=Gazeta Wyborcza | year=2001 | work=film.gazeta.pl | url=http://film.gazeta.pl/film/1,22535,89170.html | accessdate=2010-08-01 |language=pl}}

Director Eugeniusz Starky assembled Bryan's 1939 footage, including previously unseen archival material, into the documentary film Korespondent Bryan, premiering in Warsaw in 2010.{{cite web | translator=Karolina Kołtun | title=Korespondent Bryan Film Premiere | publisher=Polish Film Institute | year=2010 | url=https://pisf.pl/en/aktualnosci/korespondent-bryan-film-premiere/ | accessdate=2020-11-03 |language=en}}

In 2022, the President of Poland Andrzej Duda awarded Bryan with Virtus et Fraternitas Medal for his contribution in documenting World War II in Poland.{{Cite web |title=Virtus et Franternitas Medals presented - Instytut Pileckiego |url=https://instytutpileckiego.pl/en/instytut/aktualnosci/wreczono-medale-virtus-et-fraternitas |access-date=2023-07-26 |website=instytutpileckiego.pl |language=en}}

{{Reflist|2}}

• {{cite book|last=Waldman |first=Harry |title=Nazi Films In America, 1933-1942 |publisher=McFarland & Company |year=2008 |isbn=9780786438617}}

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{{Wikisource|Author:Julien Hequembourg Bryan}}

• [https://www.thenation.com/article/witness-total-war/ Biography of Julien Bryan] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181109153101/https://www.thenation.com/article/witness-total-war/ |date=2018-11-09 }} at The Nation
• {{YouTube|VzalQu55vY8|Schools to the South}} (circa 1943), short documentary film about education in Latin America, at the Internet Archive
• [http://www.ushmm.org/search/results/?q=julien+bryan Bryan's films held by the USHMM]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090303101640/http://internationalfilmfoundation.com/ Films produced and/or distributed by the International Film Foundation or Julien Bryan]
• [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt7779r7jv/ The Julien Hequembourg Bryan papers] are available for research at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives.
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=btkDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA328 Article and photographs by Julien Bryan] in Mar 1940 Popular Mechanics.

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Category:1899 births

Category:1974 deaths

Category:People from Titusville, Pennsylvania

Category:American Presbyterians

Category:American documentary filmmakers

Category:American photojournalists

Category:Princeton University alumni

Category:Union Theological Seminary alumni

Category:Articles containing video clips

Category:Journalists from Pennsylvania

Category:20th-century American journalists

Category:American male journalists

Category:Recipients of the Virtus et Fraternitas Medal

Category:American Field Service personnel of World War I