David Pablo Boder (9 November 1886 – 18 December 1961) was a Latvian-American professor of psychology at the
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...
who traveled in 1946 to Europe to record interviews with
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
survivors. During that trip, he collected over a hundred interviews totaling 120 hours on a
wire recorder
Wire recording or magnetic wire recording was the first magnetic recording technology, an analog type of audio storage in which a magnetic recording is made on a thin steel wire. The first crude magnetic recorder was invented in 1898 by Valde ...
developed by fellow professor Dr
Marvin Camras
Marvin Camras (January 1, 1916 – June 23, 1995) was an electrical engineer and inventor who was widely influential in the field of magnetic recording.
Camras built his first recording device, a wire recorder, in the 1930s for a cousin who w ...
. He was the first to record the experiences of the survivors and is a highly noted primary source reference.
[David P. Boder, I Did Not Interview the Dead, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949]
Family and career
Boder was born Aron Mendel Michelson to Berl and Betti (Frank) Michelson, a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family living in
Liepāja
Liepāja (; liv, Līepõ; see #Names and toponymy, other names) is a state city in western Latvia, located on the Baltic Sea. It is the largest-city in the Kurzeme Planning Region, Kurzeme Region and the third-largest city in the country after R ...
,
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
. The large Jewish community residing in Liepāja at that time likely allowed Boder to grow up speaking Yiddish and German, reserving Russian for speaking at school.
At around age 19, Boder began studying psychology, first in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
and then
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
. While living in St. Petersburg, Boder married Pauline Ivianski in 1907, who gave birth to their daughter Elena later that year. They divorced in 1909.
In 1919, Boder, his second wife Nadejda, and his daughter moved to
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
, fleeing the
Russian Civil War
, date = October Revolution, 7 November 1917 – Yakut revolt, 16 June 1923{{Efn, The main phase ended on 25 October 1922. Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued Basmachi movement, in Central Asia and Tungus Republic, the Far East th ...
. Nadejda died in the
1918 flu pandemic
The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...
soon after their arrival. In Mexico, Boder learned to speak Spanish, taught psychology at the National University, and married his third wife Dora in 1925 with whom he moved to the United States soon after.
Upon moving to the U.S., Boder obtained degrees from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, while also working at the Lewis Institute (which became
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...
).
European Displaced Persons Project
Upon the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Boder conceived of a project for interviewing displaced persons of the war, to preserve their stories and investigate the psychological effects of war. In July 1946, Boder arrived in Paris and spent the next nine weeks conducting 130 interviews in 16 locations across France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
By this time, Boder spoke over seven languages, allowing him to conduct interviews in the subjects' native tongue.
Most of the subjects were Eastern European Jews, primarily from Poland, but Boder also spoke with Western European Jews, non-observant German Jews, Greek Jews and non-Jews.
In October 1946, Boder returned to the U.S. and began transcribing the interviews and working on a book manuscript, supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. In 1949, a collection of eight transcribed interviews and Boder's analysis was published under the title ''I Did Not Interview the Dead'', though this book sold poorly and went out of print.
Boder would continue to work on transcribing the interviews until 1956, when his funding from the National Institute of Mental Health ran out.
Later life
In 1951, Boder interviewed persons displaced by a large flood in
Kansas City
The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...
. In 1952, Boder retired from the Illinois Institute of Technology and relocated with his wife to
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
as an unpaid research associate.
Boder died of a heart attack on December 18, 1961 at age 75.
Notes and references
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boder, David P.
1886 births
1961 deaths
Illinois Institute of Technology faculty
Scientists from Liepāja
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Mexico
Jewish American academics
Mexican emigrants to the United States