- [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.