“We do have quite a number of films that represent, chronologically, the period so we can really examine just this particular location over time. In a sense this collection of amateur films, some of which have never been viewed by the public, offers a window into an evolving Austria from the perspective of everyday people. And because several of these films show similar scenes from different perspectives, this collection opens the door to new analysis of Austria’s history to supplement current knowledge. Many of these films, such as the one from the Baker family, were already part of online and accessible film archives, but this project unites them with films from other institutions’ archives and independent individuals in a way that focuses and contextualizes them in a more complete story. Though the focus of the project is the Holocaust and the World War II period, some of the films depict Jewish life before the war and some, though not any of the ones embedded here, show the liberation of concentration camps in Austria. In one scene a Nazi soldier questions Baker’s wife, who was not Jewish, as she tries to enter a building. In between shots of his family, he filmed marching Nazi soldiers and buildings defaced with the word “Jude,” German for Jew. Ross Baker was an American professor on sabbatical at the University of Vienna when the Nazis occupied the city. Anyone looking for footage of a specific person or a particular location can search all the films with one click. By cross-checking what is known about the period from newspapers and official documents, the archivists were able to add great detail and expand what viewers can glean from watching the historical footage.īeyond that, the project team made it possible for users to overlay photos of what the locations look like today, giving an added relevancy to the films. Rather than just being a staid archive, t he site offers detailed information about each frame, including the precise location and an approximate date of the scene. “The idea was to represent the subjects of the time period and challenge the perception of what it was like to be in Nazi Austria,” says Zarwell.Īs a part of the project, the archival team repaired each film to its original state, then transferred them to a machine that scanned and photographed individual frames of each film, finally stitching them all together in a single digital video file that lives on the project’s website.
#Real war footage ww2 archive
Lindsay Zarwell, archivist at the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive at the Holocaust museum, led the charge here in the United States. And the filmmakers included in this collection represent several nationalities, including Americans. The project includes footage from home movies, advertisements, newsreels and other unofficial films. They are given that name because they weren’t created to be entertainment, art or propaganda – they were never meant to stand the test of time.
These raw movies aren’t called ephemeral because they may soon not exist (though without proper conservation, they won’t). Some of the 50 films were home movies, others were donated by families of the filmmakers who were curious to know what was on the film, but lacked the resources to actually watch it. The project is pulling together films that focus on the rise of Nazism and its role in Jewish and non-Jewish life in Austria.
This film and the others embedded here are just a selection of the 50 movies that make up the “ Ephemeral Films Project: National Socialism in Austria”, a collaboration of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Austrian Film Museum and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute. Though these chilling images set the ideal opening scene for a Hollywood-produced drama, they were actually shot in 1938 by an amateur cameraman.
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