David Pablo Boder was a professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology who traveled in 1946 to Europe to record interviews with displaced persons. Arriving in Paris in late July, Boder would spend the next two months interviewing 130 displaced persons in nine languages and recording them on a state-of-the-art wire recorder. The interviews were among the earliest (if not the earliest) audio recordings of Holocaust survivors. They are valuable not only for the testimonies of survivors and other DPs, but also for the song sessions and religious services that Boder recorded at various points during the expedition. Boder's itinerary included four countries—France, Switzerland, Italy, and German—and sixteen different interview sites. On most days he conducted between two and five interviews, with each interview lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to several hours. As the weeks went by and Boder sensed his time drawing short, he stepped up the pace. Toward the end, he completed as many as nine in a single day (on September 21 in Munich). Most days total half that number; some days are unaccounted for. Boder left Europe in early October, having recorded over ninety hours of material and completely used up the two hundred spools of wire that he had brought with him. A very detailed biography is published at http://voices.iit.edu/david_boder and in Alan Rosen's The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
01:00:00 Sign: “Funk Caserne, Emigrant Assembly Center, Repatriation Center, Infiltree Center.” Soldier in front of a gate. Signs: “Deutsche Ungaren Rumanen Bulgaren Dürfen das Lager nicht betreten,” and “Übernachtungen von Gasten und Enzelnen durchreisenden im Lager sind nicht erlaubt.” Displaced men, women, children, one carries a funeral wreath. Men and women in uniform smile for camera. WS, ambulances, bombed out buildings in a city (Munich?), piles of rubble next to remains of buildings. A woman in uniform looks at the camera. Man with hat shakes her hand. VAR, several people waiting with luggage, pan. 01:02:35 Woman with a baby in her arms. Children, boy crying. Overexposed, Nazi aircraft debris, woman posing, swastika. 01:03:55 MS, gate at Dachau concentration camp: “SS Compound.” “Crematory” sign. WS, camp barracks, barbed fences, male displaced persons on camp grounds. Signs marking “The grave of thousands unknown,” “It was true. Let’s see that this never happens again,” “Hanging tree,” “Trading or bartering with prisoners is prohibited.” MS, a woman with glasses smiles for the camera. Pan, buildings at Dachau. DPs in front of a building marked “Camp Council” in English and Hebrew. Pan, Munich? destroyed, rubble below. Statue. A large billboard reads, “In town tonight, VD.” The destroyed Opera House. A sign reads, “Off limits to military personnel between 2200 0600.” Beneath it a piece of paper has been posted that reads, “Danger!!! VD!!! Contacted in this Park. This year 119, This month 22.” More shots of the destroyed city. 01:06:14 Boder at the bus station, walking towards the camera. CUs, soldiers in uniform, smiling.
Displaced persons camp at Funk Caserne and Dachau; ruins