Julien Bryan

Julien Hequembourg Bryan (23 May 1899 in Titusville, Pennsylvania – 20 October 1974) was an American photographer, filmmaker, and documentarian who documented the daily life in Poland, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1939, in the leadup to and early days of the Second World War. He was honored with a Decoration of Honor Meritorious for Polish Culture during his last visit in Poland (1974) for showing the truth about the Invasion of Poland.

His documentary film Siege reported on Poland's defense of its capital against Nazi Germany in September 1939. It is stored and viewable online at the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in a digitally restored form in HD.

Before World War II

Bryan was the son of an elder in the Presbyterian Church with a long missionary tradition. 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, and wrote a book Ambulance 464 about this experience illustrated by his photographs.

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 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.

In 2009, the grown-up girl, Kazimiera Mika, spoke about the event and said she was 12 at the time. They first reunited in 1958, when Bryan returned to Warsaw. Through Polish Radio he also made an appeal to the American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help civilians targeted by enemy bombers. 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 Look magazine published another 26 in the December 5 issue. Bryan produced in 1940 as a short documentary film Siege, released by RKO Radio Pictures, 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. Although the film Siege is only 10 minutes long, Julien Bryan presented Franklin Delano Roosevelt his 80-minute-long film from fighting Warsaw.

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.

After World War II

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.

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. 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 . The role of unnamed "American journalist" based on Julien Bryan was portrayed by Jack Recknitz.

Director Eugeniusz Starky assembled Bryan's 1939 footage, including previously unseen archival material, into the documentary film Korespondent Bryan, premiering in Warsaw in 2010.

Honours 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.