Title:CZECH JEWISH FAMILY LIFE AND HOLIDAYS IN PRE-WAR EUROPE [Allocated Title]
Film Number:MGH 6432-2
Other titles:AMATEUR FILM BY HARTMANN FAMILY [Alternative Title]
Summary: Amateur film shot by the Hartmann family recording post- and pre-war scenes of Jewish life.
Description: Skiing scenes of Jan Hartman (formerly Hartmann), his wife Geneviéve, daughter Eva and son Denis in Verbier, Switzerland. Geneviève outside a villa on the Costa Brava, Spain with Eva and Denis, then playing on the beach and in the sea (under-exposed). Geneviève and Eva on a boat, Jan and Denis on the same boat. Geneviève and Eva on a beach. The Hartman family playing on the beach and in the sea. (These scenes are post-war.)
A view (from an elevated position) of the Arc de Triomphe and crowds on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. Troops march in the 14th July (Bastille Day) parade along the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. The Eiffel Tower and the fountains in the Trocadéro. Views of the World Fair (Exposition 1937, Paris) pavilions including the USSR and Romania pavilions. Edita Hartmannová poses with the Eiffel Tower behind her. Albert Speer's German pavilion. Scenes around the World Fair (exteriors only) including Boris Iofan's USSR pavilion with Vera Mukhina's 'Worker and Peasant' statue. A small 'train' carries visitors around the fair. Scenes around the base of the Eiffel Tower. The Belgium pavilion. Rapid views of the city, partly obscured by a finger over the lens, various Parisian landmarks including Notre Dame, the Madéleine and busy street scenes. Jan and George (Jirí) Hartmann playing tennis at Prague Sparta Tennis Club? Karel (Judi?) Hartmann, his wife Edita and Jan and George pose at the net. A folding kayak is assembled and launched onto a lake (Doksy, northern Bohemia). Jan and George paddle off in it, watched by Karel. Views of the lake. Scenes of people rowing and swimming.
Alternative Title:AMATEUR FILM BY HARTMANN FAMILY [Alternative Title]
Colour:B&W
Digitised:No
Object_Number:MGH 6432-2
Sound:Silent
Access Conditions:NON-IWM
Featured Period:
Production Date:1957
Production Country: Czechoslovakia
Production Details: Hartmann, Karel (Production individual)
Hartman, Jan1926-08-102009Jan Hartman, born 10 August 1926, lived an affluent life as the son of a lawyer in Prague. Jan, his elder brother Jiri and their parents moved to the Czechoslovakian countryside in September 1938 to avoid the expected German bombings of Prague.
Their escape from destruction was short-lived, cut off by the arrival of the German Army the following spring and the imposed restrictions on Jewish civilian rights that soon followed. Despite his family's attempts to leave Czechoslovakia, his father was arrested by the Gestapo on a number of occasions, and Jan and his brother were assembled for transportation to Theresienstadt camp in 1942.
In the years that followed, the brothers moved through the camp system becoming inmates in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Czestochowa and Buchenwald, where they were separated.
Jan and Jiri were reunited in the spring of 1945 when they were liberated
The brothers returned to Prague together to find their flat empty and abandoned by the SS men who had lived there. Their aunt, who had survived both Belsen and Ravensbrück, took them in under her care.
Jan and Jiri's parents never returned, and it was not until years later that Jan learned that they had been killed at Auschwitz.
Shortly following his return home, Jan began a series of paintings which reflected his experience in the camp system.
(Production individual)
