Three teenage boys stand outside on the grounds of the Goldschmidt Jewish private school in Berlin-Grunewald.
Overview
- Caption
- Three teenage boys stand outside on the grounds of the Goldschmidt Jewish private school in Berlin-Grunewald.
- Photographer
- Julien Bryan
- Date
-
1937
- Locale
- Berlin, [Berlin] Germany
- Variant Locale
- Berlin-Buckow
Berlin-Mariendorf
Berlin-Ploetzensee
Berlin-Reinickendorf
Berlin-Tempelhof
Berlin-Wannsee
Berlin-Schlachtensee
Berlin-Duppel - Event History
- The Goldschmidt School was a private, co-educational Jewish school in Berlin founded by Dr. Leonore Goldschmidt in 1935 to provide a tranquil environment for Jewish students who were being forced out of the public school system by the Nazi regime, to continue their education and prepare for emigration. Goldschmidt (1897-1983) was a German Jewish school teacher who had taught both in England and Germany. Following her dismissal from her teaching post at the Sophie-Charlotte school in Berlin in April 1933, Goldschmidt taught at the private Jewish Waldschule Grunewald run by Toni Lessler on the Hagenstrasse. On May 1, 1935 she opened her own school in rented quarters on the Kronberger Strasse. Her lawyer husband, Ernst Goldschmidt, served as its chief administrator. Soon after opening, the school was moved to a large villa on the Hohenzollerndamm Strasse in Berlin-Grunewald that had been built by the Roseneck-Terraingesellschaft in the early 1920s. The school eventually expanded to include four buildings located on Hohenzollerndamm 102 and 105-110 and Berkaer Strasse 31. The buildings were elegant mansions with wide halls and tall windows that were surrounded by expansive lawns. The enrollment grew quickly, numbering more than 500 students at the height of its operation in 1937. Almost all the children were the sons and daughters of upper or upper middle class professionals and businessmen, whose families had lived in Germany for generations. Few of the students were either ardent Zionists or Orthodox Jews. In February 1937 the school was authorized to give the English matriculation exam to its students, which allowed those who passed it to continue their studies in Cambridge, England, thereby improving their chances of emigration to England or the United States. Many students fled Germany during the four years of the school's existence, and almost all escaped the Final Solution. On the morning after the Kristallnacht pogrom the Goldschmidt school was threatened by a mob of Hitler Youth. Goldschmidt defused the situation by transferring legal ownership of the school to one of the British teachers and ordering the Union Jack hoisted atop the building. The students were led quietly out the back of the building in shifts and told to return in three days after the situation had quieted down. While the school reopened, it no longer remained a tranquil retreat, and the students had to endure constant heckling from members of the Hitler Youth who took up a permanent post outside the school. On December 8, 1938 the school's application to sell the Roseneck property was rejected by the city of Berlin. The following spring, on April 19, 1939, the Roseneck complex was taken over by the SS and the remaining students were moved back to the Kronberger Strasse site. After Goldschmidt's emigration to England in 1939 the school was run by one of its teachers, Dr. Kurt Lewent, until it was closed on November 30 of that year.
[Sources: Wyden, Peter. "Stella." Doubleday, NY, 1993, pp.25-7; 41-5; 66-9; "Juedische Privatschule von Dr. Leonore Goldschmidt Wirkungsstaette."
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Julien Bryan ArchiveSource Record ID: Collections: 2003.214Second Record ID: Bryan Roll G-37-50/08 - Restriction
- NOT FOR RELEASE without the permission of Julien Bryan Archive
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Julien Bryan (1899-1974) was a documentary filmmaker who filmed and photographed the everyday life and culture of individuals and communities in a variety of countries around the globe. He never received formal training as a photographer, but learned during the course of his many travels. Bryan hailed from Titusville, PA, was a Princeton graduate, and finished the Union Theological Seminary (though he was never ordained). From an early age he exhibited an interest in world travel and in 1917, as an 18 year-old, he volunteered to serve in the ambulance corps in France, ferrying the wounded soldiers from the battlefield of Verdun to hospitals. During his college years Bryan started making extended trips abroad, which he documented in photographs. He funded his foreign travels by giving public slide lectures in the U.S. about the places he visited. By 1930, when he made his first trip to the Soviet Union, Bryan was equipped with a 35mm motion picture camera as well as his still cameras. In 1937 he made an extended trip to Nazi Germany, during which he took hundreds of pictures of Nazi leaders, party rallies, daily life on the streets, and anti-Jewish propaganda. This material was used in numerous film and slide lectures he delivered at concert halls (including Carnegie Hall in New York) and university auditoriums around the country. Bryan's film footage of Nazi Germany was incorporated in two "March of Time" films in the late 1930s, and was apparently screened at the White House. In the first week of September 1939, Bryan, who had been filming in Europe that summer, found himself on the way to Warsaw just as all foreign reporters and diplomats, as well as Polish government officials, were fleeing the capital in the wake of the German invasion. By the time he realized that the city was about to face a devastating siege, it was too late for him to get out. He therefore decided to take advantage of his situation as the only foreign photographer in the city and record the events with his still and motion picture cameras. In his efforts, Bryan received support from Stefan Starzynski, the mayor of Warsaw, who provided him with a car, guide, interpreter, and a permit to photograph whatever he liked. For two weeks, from September 7 until September 21, Bryan stayed in Warsaw filming and photographing the German bombardment and its impact on the Polish citizenry. He was able to leave during a brief truce that was negotiated to allow citizens of neutral countries to evacuate. Bryan was able to bring his films out, though for a time he got separated from his suitcase of film and thought they were lost. From Warsaw, he was taken to Koenigsberg. While waiting for German officials to decide his fate he hid his films in the chemical container of a gas mask that a fellow American was taking home as a souvenir. Bryan got them back six weeks later in New York. After his return to the U.S. via Sweden and Norway, Bryan published a book on the German Blitzkrieg in Poland, entitled "The Siege." At this time, Bryan was asked by the Office of War Information to make films (23 in all) about the life and culture of various Latin American countries, in an attempt to prevent the spread to the New World of the type of ethnic and national hatred that had overcome Europe. Bryan had no formal sponsorship or source of funding until he set up the International Film Foundation in 1945. For the remainder of his career he made short documentary films for the school market. His son, Sam Bryan, is a historian and schoolteacher who was fully involved in the film production process as well as in the planning and execution of the trips. During the 1980s, the foundation ceased to be economically viable and Sam Bryan closed down most of its operations.
In 2003 Sam Bryan donated both his father's still and motion picture footage of wartime Europe to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- Record last modified:
- 2004-06-25 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1152542
