Here is something I never expected to find—particularly because it never occurred to me that such a thing even existed. The 93-second video embedded below, a 1944 newsreel, shows the arrival of the MS Gripsholm in New York harbor, on 15 March 1944. To be precise, the ship entered New York harbor, then docked in Jersey City, across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
Why am I posting about this? Although we probably will never spot them, Henry, Bea, and Lois Gunden were on that ship at this very moment. As the newsreel commentator notes, the ship’s passengers included 663 former prisoners of war and internees who had been exchanged for German prisoners and people of German descent who had been detained by the U.S. Among those 663 passengers were all those who had been interned in the Brenner Park Hotel in Baden-Baden, Germany, that is, all the diplomats held along with Lois and Bea and Henry.
As many readers already know, before broadcast television news rose to prominence in the 1960s, many Americans relied on theater newsreels for a first-hand viewing of current events. For more than eighty additional newsreels from this period, see the videos posted here.
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