During the summer of 1998, Dr. M. Ellen Mitchell, Director of the Institute of Psychology, and the staff of the Paul V. Galvin Library of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) uncovered a sixteen-volume set of typescripts. The typescripts give first-hand accounts of horrible brutality, incredible survival, and liberation of Holocaust victims. The interviews were collected by Dr. David Boder, a faculty member and former Head of the Department of Psychology and Philosophy at the Lewis Institute of Chicago. The Lewis Institute later became the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 1946, Dr. Boder traveled to Europe to become the first researcher to record the actual testimonies of Holocaust victims.

The set of typescripts include 70 of the original 109 interviews that were conducted in 1946 and transcribed into English by Dr. Boder. The Paul V. Galvin Library of IIT identified the collection as primary source material for scholars interested in the Holocaust, as well as a learning tool for the general public, and decided to republish it through the World Wide Web.

In the near future, this site will integrate interview transcripts; reproductions of the original wire recordings; maps; essays by scholars and survivors; papers of Dr. Boder; and other information from our archives. Our goal is to create a seamless, searchable, multimedia Web site where the actual voices of survivors will be available through audio streaming. Until this is complete, the actual voices of the survivors can be heard on wire recordings, which are held at the Library of Congress.

This interactive approach will enable scholars, students, and the public to navigate through translations of the interviews, hear the voices of the survivors, and pinpoint geographic locations mentioned on the website. The site is still under construction, but we believe that this approach offers a one-of-a-kind experience and a rich learning tool.

During the last days of World War II when Nazi death camps were discovered, United States General Dwight Eisenhower invited journalists to "come and see for themselves" the atrocities that were being uncovered. Psychologist Dr. David Pablo Boder took up the offer. With the support of editors from the "Chicago Tribune," the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), and Chicago's Psychological Museum, Dr. Boder made the trip to war-ravaged Europe in 1946 carrying a wire recorder (developed at IIT by Marvin Camras), 200 spools of carbon steel wire, and an assortment of converters and transformers. He was able to record 109 interviews totaling 120 hours.

Dr. Boder interviewed displaced people in France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. The survivors interviewed included farmers, lawyers, artists, carpenters and others; representing all economic levels, many religions, and various nationalities and language groups from across Europe. His approach with each interview was to point out that little was known in America about what had happened in Europe and that by telling his or her story; the interviewee could contribute valuable information about the fate of displaced persons. Dr. Boder would begin by asking the person's name, age, and where they were when the war started, then allowed them to speak at will, without the constraints of interview questions.

This collection of recorded oral history interviews is unique and up to now has not been easily accessible. While there is a tremendous effort around the world today to record the stories of survivors of the Holocaust, these interviews are special because Dr. Boder interviewed survivors in 1946 while they were still in displaced persons camps around Europe -- only one year after their liberation from the death camps. He was able to record first-hand accounts of incredible horror, survival, and liberation, in the native languages (Yiddish, German, Russian, and Polish) of the surviving victims.

Dr. Boder returned to Chicago and with the help of grants from the United States National Health Service, transcribed and translated 70 of the interviews into English from 1947-1957. A micro-opaque card edition of these interviews was published in 1957. Few libraries today own this set, and most no longer have the equipment needed to read the cards. In 1949, Dr. Boder published eight of the interviews in I Did Not Interview the Dead (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949). The interviews contained in this volume were edited slightly from the original versions.

Dr. Boder retired from IIT in 1952 and was named professor emeritus and on the advice of his physician, moved to a warmer climate. He finished his academic career in the psychology department of the University of California, Los Angeles, where his personal papers are retained. In addition to his extensive work with the interviews, Dr. Boder also devised a trauma index, which can be found as one of the website indexes.

For additional information on Dr. David Boder, view his online biography.