This post was written by Criss Austin. Criss is the supervisor of the Motion Picture Preservation Lab. On April 29th, 1945 the United States Army liberated the Dachau concentration camp. The 42nd and 45th Divisions and 20th Armored Division, along with Signal Corps photographers and cameramen, assisted the survivors and documented the atrocities they found. … Continue reading The Production File Tells the Story: How “Death Mills” Came to U.S. Audiences
This post was adapted from a presentation given by Criss Austin and includes extracts from an email she recently sent to staff. Criss is the supervisor of the Motion Picture Preservation Lab at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The National Archives holds tens of thousands of feet of motion pictures recording the horrors … Continue reading A Framework for Remembrance: NARA Contributes Holocaust Films to EU Project
While the pandemic significantly altered our day-to-day responsibilities in the Still Picture Branch, our team adapted to the challenges presented by the work-from-home environment and bolstered our Research and Reference capabilities by increasing access to our holdings, digitally and on-site. One of the projects we’ve undertaken to help in this endeavor is the description and … Continue reading Subject Finding Aid Project
The International Military Tribunal, more commonly known at the Nuremberg trials, began this week 75 years ago in Nuremberg, Germany. The trials were a series of military tribunals held to convict major Nazi German leaders on charges of crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit each of these crimes. It … Continue reading The Nuremberg Trials, 75 Years Later
While we frequently share interesting early maps from the Cartographic Branch holdings, today we wanted to focus on some of Cartographic's more recent maps. The RG 263 CIA Published Maps (also called the CIA Numbered Maps or Numerical Series) is made up of over 22,000 declassified maps. These maps date primarily from the 1940s to … Continue reading RG 263 CIA Published Maps: A Digitization Project In Progress
The Cartographic Branch is digitizing the Record Group 77, War Department Map Collection (NAID 305808), which consists of maps of both the United States and foreign areas. At this time, only the maps relating to the United States have been digitized, although we hope to digitized the foreign maps in the future. The United States … Continue reading Highlights from the War Department Map Collection
As you may know, the Cartographic Branch holds many maps relating to Civil War battles and sites. However, what you may not know is that many of these maps are available to view anytime and anywhere through the National Archives Online Catalog. Today we're featuring maps showing the Shiloh Battlefield. All of the maps featured … Continue reading Mapping the Battle of Shiloh
We are very excited to announce that all of the maps in the US File Unit RG 77: Civil Works Map File have now been digitized and are available online for viewing and download! These images can be found by searching the National Archives Catalog, NAID #7491452. The records in this series comprised the main … Continue reading Now Available Online: RG 77, Civil Works Map Files, US File Unit!
This post was written in collaboration with Meghan Ryan Guthorn. The Jewish celebration of Passover began this year on April 19th, 2019. In honor of the holiday, the Still Pictures Branch pulled together some images of servicemen celebrating Passover around the world through the years. The images below depict celebrations from 1918 to 1985, in … Continue reading Celebration of Passover (Photos)
This post was written by Harry Kidd. Harry is a volunteer at the National Archives working on textual and photographic digitization projects. Harry is a former Navy photographer himself and came across this story while researching military photographers. John Purroy Mitchel (1879 – 1918) was a native New Yorker. Trained as a lawyer, he gained … Continue reading John Purroy Mitchel: The Boy Mayor of New York
