David Boder: Reflecting on His Work, Life and Legacy 80 Years After

The Diana and Eli Zborowski Center for the Study of the Aftermath of the Holocaust, The International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University, and The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention, The American University of Paris, are organizing a conference on David Boder: Reflecting on his life, work and legacy after 80 years.

In the summer of 1946, psychologist Dr. David Boder began one of the first audio testimony projects with survivors of the Holocaust. Responding to a call by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Boder sought to raise awareness among the American public regarding the events of the Holocaust and was also interested in highlighting the plight of Jewish displaced persons in Europe. Through his interview project, he also aimed to gather personal reports "for future psychological and anthropological study.” At the same time, he recognized that the survivor accounts he gathered were not “the grimmest stories that could be told--I did not interview the dead.” This haunting phrase became the title of his first book on the project in which he published eight of the interviews.

More information on David Boder’s project, and access to all his postwar interviews with survivors are available here.

Boder interviewed approximately 130 people, both Jewish survivors and non-Jewish bystanders, at DP centers in four European countries. The audio recordings and transcriptions are available online at https://voices.library.iit.edu/.

As we mark 80 years since this innovative project, we invite scholars to reflect on Boder’s life and work in relation to early post-war Holocaust testimony, but also to the fields of Social Psychology, Ethnography, Oral History, Linguistics, Literature, Social History, Refugee Studies and Jewish Studies.

Please find and download the Call for Papers below.

All outside guests must register by October 4, 2026, on the online form below and come with a valid ID. Please note the sign-up form is for guests who want to attend the conference and NOT participate in the conference.