David P. Boder

David Pablo Boder (9 November 1886 in Liepāja, Latvia – 18 December 1961), was a professor of psychology at Illinois Institute of Technology when, in 1946, he traveled to Europe to record the experiences of Holocaust survivors.^[1] During that trip, he collected over a hundred interviews totaling 120 hours on a wire recorder developed by fellow professor Dr Marvin Camras. He was the first to record the experiences of the survivors and is a highly noted primary source reference.^[2][3][4] Recordings and transcriptions can be found at: http://voices.iit.edu .

Boder studied psychology in Leipzig and St. Petersburg before teaching in Mexico and, finally, the United States.^[5][6]

Notes and references

1. Alan Dein, I Did Not Interview the Dead, BBC Radio 4, 4 July 2009
2. David Pablo Boder Papers, 1938-1957 University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Department of Special Collections.
3. David P. Boder, Topical Autobiographies of Displaced People Recorded Verbatim in Displaced Persons Camps, with a Psychological and Anthropological Analysis. Chicago: [s.n.], 1950.
4. David P. Boder, I Did Not Interview the Dead, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949
5. Alan Dein, I Did Not Interview the Dead, BBC Radio 4, 4 July 2009
6. Alan Rosen, That Great and Mournful Past: David Boder and the Ethnography of Holocaust Testimony, 2009

External links

• "Before It Had A Name"—This American Life radio story. Act One of this episode of This American Life is about David Boder. Excerpts of his recordings are included. Reporter Carl Marziali tells the story.