Warsaw and Danzig, Poland, destruction and rebuilding circa 1946

Bombed out multi-story YMCA building in Warsaw, Poland. Several workers chip away at the concrete structure, others collect and stack bricks from the rubble. Another worker examines window frames for damage. (This footage likely dates to 1946 - see notes section for further information). MS, low angle, a man and a woman walk down a bombed out street in Warsaw, toward the camera, snow covers the ground. VS of the destruction in the city, civilians mill about the streets, with torn, threadbare clothing, there are some Polish military personnel in these shots as well. Poles board a street car, young children purchase flowers from a street vendor. INT: men and boys inside what seems to be YMCA club-they are in a café, reading newspapers in English and Polish, and drinking. EXT: low angle a view of the bombed out Deutsche Bank building. The camera pans the sign, and then cuts to another building, also damaged. EXT: the locations shifts to Danzig: where we see more destruction of that city, along the canals, etc. CU of a bombed out building in Danzig with German signage above the entrance. Scenes at the port in Danzig they echo Julien Bryan's 1937 footage shot in this city, however now the entire port is in ruins. The banks along the canal are crumbling. INT: Young Polish boys play checkers at a shelter/community center in Warsaw and read "Zycwe Warszawy", CU on checkerboard with pawns in play. The boys compare stories in the newspapers; the camera focuses on a political cartoon of a man with a caption underneath him that reads: "Pacifista". Three boys put a puzzle together in the corner of a room, seated at a round wooden table. Scene quickly cuts to INT, high angle, a warehouse that is storing UNRRA supplies. Two men go through wooden crates and hand out clothing and home supplies to women and children. INT: boys playing board games and pool. INT: young women are lead in a series of calisthenics in a large gymnasium. The instructor is male. VS, close-ups on the various young women as they perform their exercise routine. Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. Bryan traveled widely taking 35mm film that he sold to motion picture companies. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former USSR. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland, including Jewish areas of Warsaw and Krakow and anti-Jewish signs in Germany. His footage appeared in March of Time theatrical newsreels. His photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He was in Warsaw in September 1939 when Germany invaded and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of WWII. He recorded this experience in both the book Siege (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940) and the short film Siege (RKO Radio Pictures, 1940) nominated for an Academy Award in 1940. In 1946, Bryan photographed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in postwar Europe.