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The album is unique as it shows the German attack on Warsaw in 1939 through colourful images. The colours in the pictures which show the bombed buildings and desperate people, make a great impression, bringing those times closer to today's viewer.
Julien Bryan, an American reporter, came to Warsaw in the first days of September 1939 to observe the beginning of warfare. He entered Poland through Romania, and quickly experienced first bombing. He thought, however, that it was a stray airplane. He did not suspect it was a massive air attack involving the entire Polish territory. He reached Warsaw after a few days on the train. The whole time he was convinced that military operations will ensue slowly and reaching the Vistula River by the German troops will take many more days. Surprised by blockade of the city, he was forced to remain in the Polish capital, which was being constantly bombed, for two weeks. During this period he
decided to do his job as a photographer, often risking his live. His admiration for the courage of the Polish population, ruthlessly bombed by German planes grew constantly. Stefan Starzynski, the Warsaw mayor,
gave Bryan a car with a driver and a special permit to photograph everything that has happened in the besieged capital. This allowed him to freely move around the city. He made shots in the city center, in the
Wola district, but especially in poor districts of Prague. He managed to escape Warsaw on 21 September, when the sides announced a several-hour truce and the Germans besieging the city allowed for evacuation of citizens of neutral countries.
It is most amazing that during this stay in Warsaw, Bryan used Kodak color films to test this innovative solution. Pictures taken by Julien Bryan are the only colour photographs that show the siege of Warsaw in September 1939 from the viewpoint of an observer sympathetic to the besieged. He shows the despair of Varsovians, rubble, injured and
homeless. Other known colour photographs showing these events, were taken by the German propaganda. Nonetheless, they show a completely different story - instead of rubble and despair, there is the glory of German army.
The album contains colour and coloured photographs of Warsaw from September 1939. Colouring of black and white film took place shortly after Bryan returned to the United States in 1939, and was clearly carried out under the eye of the photographer, because the colors are rendered amazingly faithfully. In the second part the album tells about
the fate of some of the picture protagonists, which had been sought out by a photographer during his visit to Warsaw in 1958. The photographs are accompanied by fragments of Julien Bryan’s texts, recounting the events immortalized in pictures.
The album is bilingual, Polish-English.
So writes Julian Kulski a few days before the outbreak of World War II, in this remarkable diary of a boy at war from ages 10 to 16. As the war unfolds through his eyes, we are privileged to meet a rare soul of indomitable will, courage and compassion.
Kulski, the son of the Deputy Mayor of Warsaw, is a 10-year-old Boy Scout when the Germans invade Poland in September 1939. He soon begins waging his own private war against the Germans with small acts of sabotage. At age 12, Kulski is recruited into the clandestine Underground Army by his Scoutmaster and begins training in military tactics and weapons handling. At 13, he accompanies his commander on a secret mission into the Warsaw Ghetto to liaise with the leaders of the Jewish Resistance.
Arrested by the Gestapo at age 14, Kulski is incarcerated in the notorious Pawiak Prison, beaten, interrogated at Gestapo headquarters, and sentenced to Auschwitz. After being rescued, he joins the Ninth Commando Company of the Underground Army, and at age 15 fights in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
Taken prisoner by the Germans, 16-year-old Kulski ends the war in a POW camp, finally risking a dash for freedom onto an American truck instead of waiting for "liberation" by the Soviets.
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Features
- Hardcover
- 160 Pages
- English - Polish Text
- 2014
- Size 9" x 11" - 23cm x 27.5cm
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