- [Narrator] Adolf Hitler came to power
in Germany on January 30, 1933.
For those who fit the narrow definition of a German citizen,
the Nazis offered a sense of community and national pride.
These home movies of Hitler's head butler,
Arthur Kannenberg, were discovered at the end of the war
by John Christopher Bechtler,
a member of the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps.
Kannenberg's nieces pose for the camera
by the family's Mercedes in 1938.
Kannenberg and his mother join them.
Johannes Vosskamp filmed fellow World War I veterans
and early Nazi Party members in the 1930s.
Here, former soldiers prepare to travel
to the annual Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg in 1935.
They organized a boat trip to Wesel
for a march sponsored by the Sturmabteilungen or SA.
The SA was a Nazi paramilitary organization
that helped to implement the persecution of Jews
and political opponents.
Part of the method
by which the Nazis controlled the German population
was the replacement of civic organizations
with groups affiliated with the regime.
As is clear from these movies, Vosskamp's life
as a Nazi party member was intimately connected
to his family and social life.
Vosskamp and his daughter Edith,
the donor of the films, appear in some scenes.
Vosskamp himself was drafted to serve in Hitler's army.
He went missing at the front and was presumed dead.
The Nazi state aimed to dominate all aspects
of German political, economic, and cultural life.
At the same time, the Nazi leadership assumed a belligerent
and militaristic posture towards Europe
and the rest of the world.
Laszlo Antos was a Jewish Hungarian engineer
who lived in Berlin.
He was conscripted into a forced labor battalion in Hungary
but survived the war.
An avid amateur filmmaker, Antos shot this footage
when the Nazis staged the Olympics in Berlin in 1936.
For almost two weeks during the games,
the Nazi regime camouflaged racist, militaristic policies.
Prior to the games,
most anti-Jewish signs in Berlin were removed,
and German newspapers toned down
their antisemitic rhetoric.
Overt persecution of the Jews resumed once the games ended.
Julien Bryan was an American documentarian
who in 1937 filmed daily life under the Nazis.
Here, Germans tour the "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Munich.
As part of their effort to control
all aspects of German life,
the Nazis banned modernist art from museums
and other public spaces.
This exhibition featured paintings
by such artists as Otto Dix, Wassily Kandinsky
and Marc Chagall, accompanied by denigrating captions.
This unique private footage
of Hermann Goering's so-called special train,
which served as his mobile headquarters,
shows Goering and other high ranking Nazis
and members of the Romanian Air Force.
John Christopher Bechtler acquired the footage
during his time in Germany as an interrogator
of Nazi prisoners after the war.
Goering and his companions lunch outdoors
and look at photographs.
In 1937, the March of Time newsreel company
hired Julien Bryan to cover the subject of Nazi Germany.
Bryan worked in Germany for seven weeks
and shot over three hours of film.
It was a great scoop,
as most American cameramen
were then banned from the country,
and newsreel footage that was made available
by German film companies was heavily censored.
This clip shows the 1937
Reich Party Day gathering in Nuremberg,
where Nazi Germany's aggressive militarism
was on full display.
Hitler's secret mistress, Eva Braun,
was an avid amateur filmmaker.
She shot this color film
of high-ranking Nazis visiting Hitler
at the Berghof in Berchtesgaden.
This film was confiscated by the US Army after the war
and deposited in the National Archives.
Eva Braun is visible sitting among other women
on the balcony.
These are the children of Albert Speer,
Nazi minister of armaments,
later tried and convicted at Nuremberg.
The German Reich annexed Austria in 1938,
and Nazi Germany invaded Poland
on September 1, 1939, starting World War II.
For those whom the Nazis considered inferior,
the rise of Adolf Hitler represented a mortal threat
that culminated in the Holocaust.
American professor Ross Baker
was on sabbatical studying chemistry in Vienna
when the Nazi regime annexed Austria to Germany
in March 1938.
With his wife, Helen, and three of their sons,
Baker went into the streets
with a 16-millimeter movie camera.
Ross recorded the German propaganda that blanketed the city
in an attempt to legitimize the takeover.
The Germans dispatched high- ranking Nazis to give speeches,
such as those advertised on the posters seen here,
on topics like "Why I Became an Antisemite."
Hitler greets jubilant crowds of Austrians,
many of whom welcomed him with open arms.
Ross Baker also filmed graffiti scrolled on Jewish shops.
This vandalism happened
as soon as the Nazis entered the country
and was often perpetrated by the Austrians themselves.
On April 25, 1938, Helen Baker wrote in her diary,
"Ross comes home telling of seeing Nazis
compelling an old Jew to paint JUDE on his own store window,
can hardly wait to get away from here."
Helen Baker continues in her diary,
"Ross and I tour the inner city, (Judengasse)
with every shop shut tight.
A crowd gathers outside the offices of the Jewish community
that were raided and closed by the SS
on the orders of Adolf Eichmann.
In this rare bit of film,
you see Helen Baker dressed in a dark jacket and hat
attempting to enter a Jewish shop,
only to be turned away by a Nazi.
Jews line up at this building
seeking visas to leave the country.
Jewish boys on a Kinder- transport from Berlin
arrive in France in July, 1939,
where they were sheltered at a chateau
owned by Count Hubert de Monbrison.
The count agreed to help the children
at the request of his son's Jewish doctor.
Here Mr. Zimmerman, a refugee from Germany,
helps the boys off the bus.
Blue name tags hang around their necks.
Julien Bryan was in Warsaw
within days of Germany's invasion of Poland
in September 1939
and remained there throughout the German siege of the city,
filming and photographing
what would become America's first cinematic glimpse
of the first days of World War II.
This clip illustrates the widespread destruction
and misery visited on the Polish capital by the Nazis.
Upon returning to the United States,
Bryan made a ten-minute film
about the event titled Siege,
which is now on the Library of Congress's
National Film Registry.
One person who viewed Bryan's footage
of devastated Warsaw was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt
who wrote about her impression in January, 1940 , 161 00:10:39,270 --> 00:10:41,703 in her newspaper column "My Day."
Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara
issued more than 2,000 transit visas that allowed Jewish
and other refugees to leave Lithuania.
This badly damaged eight-millimeter film
shows the Sugihara family in Bucharest,
where they were posted in 1942.
Despite the fact that her Sephardic Jewish ancestors
had previously converted to Christianity,
and she had married a Catholic,
Ellen Maexie Regenstreif
and her children were considered Jewish
when the Nazis took control of Austria in 1938.
Here is Maexie's father, Fritz Regenstreif.
The twin boys Sascha and Micha Illich.
And in the middle in the backseat
their older brother, Ivan Illich,
later a renowned Catholic philosopher.
The family managed to live relatively undisturbed
for several years,
but they were eventually driven out
of their palatial family home
located on the outskirts of Vienna.
Here, Hitler Youth,
march in the courtyard of the boys' school
from which they were expelled as Jews.
After Fritz died,
the family was forced to sell their home in 1942.
Here a Nazi official supervises activities,
as authorities remove confiscated possessions
from the Regenstreif villa
and load them into a moving truck.
As we can see from the boys' demeanor
Maexie made every effort to shield them
from the seriousness of what was happening.
Weeks later, the family filled another moving truck
with personal luggage and moved into a pension.
Maexie and her sons fled to Italy in 1943
and eventually immigrated to the United States.
Even the most commonplace home movie
may help us and future generations understand the impact
historical events have on ordinary people.
The Holocaust Museum's Steven Spielberg
Film and Video Archive actively seeks
to collect, preserve, study, and make accessible
amateur films like these.
In so doing, we rescue the evidence of the Holocaust.