At the base of all Holocaust testimony projects lies a common commitment: to record and preserve the stories of those who survived the catastrophe as told in their own voices. When it comes to survivors’ testimonies, the messenger is as important as the message. The first to subscribe to this reasoning was the American psychologist David Boder, who in 1946 set out to interview survivors in refugee camps across Western Europe. Equipped with what was then the state- of- the- art technology—an Armour Model 50 wire recorder—Boder went on to produce what was the first audio testimony of the Holocaust. The wire recorder, developed in the 1940s by Marvin Camras, Boder’s colleague at the Illinois Institute of Technology, for the U.S. military, was a portable and remarkably durable device that utilized thin steel wires rolled into spools to produce an electromagnetic recording (see Fig. 4.1 below). As Boder later commented, the device “offered a unique and exact means of recording the experiences of displaced persons. Through the wire recorder the displaced person could relate in his own language and in his own voice the story of his concentration camp life.” Studying wire- recorded narratives led him to devise a “traumatic index” by means of which “each narrative may be assessed as to the category and number of experiences bound to have a traumatizing effect upon the victim.” Boder’s 1949 monograph, I Did Not Interview the Dead, invites readers to find indications of trauma implicit in selected transcripts of recorded narratives. The premise seems to be that, to the extent that such traumatic impact exists, it should be discoverable textually. Yet the same technology that made Boder’s project ingenious was also the reason for its relative obscurity. Wire recording was soon to give way to tape recording, consequently condemning Boder’s wire spools to obsolescence and the testimonies they held to near oblivion. The short- lived medium precluded access to the recorded material.
What Can Research Teach Us about Jewish Camp Life?
