Boder visits family in Latvia before the Holocaust
Creator(s)
- UCLA Library Special Collections
- David P. Boder (Camera operator)
Biographical History
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.
Scope and Content
David Boder with family in Liepaja, Latvia - pre-war. A man and woman standing on a balcony with decorative iron scrolling. (0:07) Two men dressed in suits step out of a building. A sign in the background says J. Simson. Two couples in a park walk toward the camera and smile. A different man, dressed in a suit, smiles at the camera, then walks down a set of steps. There is a plaque on a stone column next to the steps [plaque is illegible]. A woman walks arm in arm with a man in a uniform, then the same man in uniform walks with two women who are smiling. Two women in front of a statue, likely in Riga. Family members stand in front of the same statue. Building with many flags. (1:13) A man in a uniform and a man in a suit are walking together at a train station. They are joined by more family at the station. A group of women at outside restaurant/park, joined by others. Swans in lake. Families gather in the park and an older man is the center of attention. People are standing in front of a house laughing. A group is gathered at tables in a park. They walk through the park and smile at the camera. Film becomes blurry. A woman on a train waves from a window.
Note(s)
Film reel contains handwritten label: "1932 Libau Riga"
Places
- Riga, Latvia
- Liepaja, Latvia
Genre
- Film
- Amateur.