Our Libraries
April 16, 2007
Recordings preserve voices of history
After World War II when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower invited the press to view the concentration camps, David Boder, a research psychologist and faculty member of Illinois Institute of Technology, knew that many photographs would be taken. But he also knew that people learn in different ways and that for some, hearing is more profound than seeing. Also, because he had knowledge of a new magnetic wire recorder developed by engineer and IIT colleague Marvin Camras, Boder figured it would be possible to capture the stories and voices of those who had survived the concentration camps.
It took Boder a year to line up the funding for his expedition. On Saturday July 29, 1946, Boder arrived in Paris with funding for a month and visas for France, Switzerland and Italy with a clearance pending in Washington, D.C., for Germany. He also had lugged along wire recorders, several hundred spools of wire and an assortment of converters and transformers.
Boder was able to get lodgings in a nice, centrally located hotel, essential for traveling with all that heavy equipment. He made contact with several voluntary agencies and by the next Monday was interviewing displaced persons who had survived what we now call the Holocaust. In a later article Boder said he simply asked those who he interviewed to tell what had happened to them when the war started. As was the practice in psychological interviews in those days, Boder sat behind the person so that his facial expressions would not influence the speaker. He reported that some spoke for only 20 minutes, but some spoke for four hours.
The result of Boder’s expedition was 109 interviews in a variety of languages. Fortunately Boder spoke English, French, German, Polish, Russian and Yiddish.
Later he painstakingly translated and transcribed 70 of the interviews. Somewhere along the way Boder ceased to see the project as research psychology and viewed it as an important piece of social history. He wrote a book about the experience, “I Did Not Interview the Dead,” and many articles.
But the time wasn’t right. No one wanted to talk about the concentration camps in the 1940s. Not until a decade later would the word “Holocaust” become common parlance relative to the WWII genocide of the Jews. Boder’s transcripts, while cataloged as a part of IIT’s collection, got little notice by library users.
Seven years ago Dr. Ellen Mitchell, director of IIT’s Institute of Psychology, brought the collection to the library’s attention. Christopher Stewart, now IIT’s dean of libraries, was then an associate dean. “We knew we had the Boder material because it was cataloged. Dr. Mitchell’s interest encouraged us to turn the paper transcripts in to a digital record. Library staff members volunteered to re-transcribe the interviews for the Web, although many found the material unsettling. Their work has meant that the library now offers the transcripts of 70 interviews along with the streaming audio of 16 interviews on the project Web site at voices.iit.edu.
“We’ve taken several steps toward making this significant material available,” Stewart continued. “We recently received a small grant of federal monies through the Illinois State Library. It will enable us to restore some of the recordings and possibly more interviews available. But more money is needed. These recordings are 50 years old and they need preservation and attention if they are to survive much longer. There are an additional 39 interviews that need to be analyzed. We are hopeful that some of these are in good enough condition to be translated and transcribed. Also, our Web site for these materials needs updating to incorporate new content and new, interactive tools. We want to ensure that the site is available to the widest possible audience.”
Access and listen to a recent Fox News interview with Mitchell and Stewart and hear some of the recordings for yourself. It’s a miracle that Boder made these recordings using the newest technology of the day. We have the opportunity to use today’s newest technology to preserve these voices forever. Boder is right: For some of us, hearing is more profound than seeing.
For more background on the project, listen to my podcast interview with Stewart at www.sarahlong.org/podcast .
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Sarah Long's "Our Libraries" column in the Daily Herald is published the first Sunday of the month. The 