Featured Collection
Dr. Benjamin Morris Gasul was born in Latvia but emigrated to the United States at the age of 16. When he was invited to give a lecture in the USSR in 1939, he and his wife Lala took a tour of Europe. They brought their movie camera along on the trip and shot 16mm color footage showing the Jewish quarter of Warsaw in summer 1939, weeks before the invasion of Poland by Germany.
—USHMM RG-60.4567, Gift of the Gasul Family
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Steven Spielberg
Film and Video Archive
Overview
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The Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is a major repository for moving images pertaining to the Holocaust and related topics in European history. The collection currently comprises 1,005 hours of archival footage. Additional materials are regularly acquired from sources throughout the world. The majority of the materials originated between 1930 and 1945. The major topics covered by the collection are:
- Prewar Jewish life
- Prewar Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) life
- Germany in the 1920s and 1930s
- The Nazi rise to power
- Persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe
- Nazi propaganda films
- Internment camps
- Deportations of Jews to ghettos and concentration camps
- Refugees
- Resistance movements
- Liberation of Nazi camps in Europe
- Displaced persons camps
- Postwar trials, especially the Nuremberg trials and the trial of Adolf Eichmann
- Illegal immigration of Holocaust refugees to Palestine
- American responses to the events in Europe from 1933 to 1945
Prewar Jewish life, early 1930s. Young children reciting a lesson outdoors. Munkacs, Czechoslovakia (later Hungary).. —“March of Time” outtakes collection, National Archives and Records Administration
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Reference Service
The Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive assists researchers in viewing and/or locating sources of archival footage worldwide and makes available documentation related to the materials. For an appointment to view the collection, or for information about the holdings, contact the Film and Video Project Coordinator at 202-488-6104. Please note the following:
- The Museum does not necessarily hold the rights to materials in its collection.
- Moving image materials are available for viewing only on videotape in the Library and Archives reading room.
- The Film and Video Archive cannot reproduce footage for the public. Upon request, reproductions may be obtained via a number of Washington area labs approved by the Museum, once rights are cleared by the requestor and permissions are obtained. Reproduction fees are paid directly to the lab by the requestor.
Other Film and Video Resources:
The Museum’s Library includes a collection of published documentary and feature films on Holocaust-related subjects that is available for viewing by the public in the Library and Archives reading room. To locate a specific item, consult the Library and Archives online catalog.
The Museum’s Archives maintains a collection of unpublished oral testimonies on videotape that is available for viewing by the public in the Library and Archives reading room. To locate a specific item, consult the Library and Archives online catalog.
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Contact us at:
Film and Video Archive
(For assistance with using historical film footage)
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW
Washington, DC 20024-2126
Tel.: (202) 488-6104
Fax: (202) 314-7820
E-mail: filmvideo@ushmm.org
