Rare Colored Video: Warsaw’s Jewish Streets, 1939
Boys crowd the camera and laugh as men in black coats walk Warsaw’s Nalewki Street past shops for curtains and hats.
Benjamin Gasul, 1939. Silent 16mm Kodachrome color. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of the Gasul Family.
Boys at the lens
Boys crowd the lens and laugh as men in black coats walk Nalewki and Nowolipki past shops for curtains and hats, while Dr. Benjamin Gasul of Chicago shoots 16mm Kodachrome.
He titled that street sequence The Jewish Ghetto, though those were still open streets. The sealed ghetto came in 1940.
Nalewki and Nowolipki
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum dates those Nalewki and Nowolipki shots to about June 1939. The Karl Höffkes archive lists the same shots as 1937.
The film and what followed
Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. The sealed Warsaw ghetto was ordered in October 1940, and on 16 November the gates were shut. In April and May 1943, during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Nalewki was destroyed.
In December 2006 the Gasul family donated the reel to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Timeline
- About June 1939
- Gasul films the Jewish streets around Nalewki and Nowolipki in Kodachrome.
- 1 September 1939
- Germany invades Poland.
- October, 16 November 1940
- The sealed Warsaw ghetto is ordered, then the gates are shut.
- April, May 1943
- Warsaw ghetto uprising. Nalewki is destroyed.
- December 2006
- The Gasul family donates the reel to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.