I DID NOT INTERVIEW THE DEAD

First edition, first printing of David Boder's pioneering work of Holocaust testimony. Publisher's original grey cloth stamped with dark grey barbed wire detail to the upper and lower board and with titles in grey to the spine, in dustwrapper. A very good or better copy, the binding square and firm with a little bumping at the spine tips, the cloth bright and fresh. The contents, with some toning to the front endpaper and half title (where a couple of newspaper clippings had been loosely laid in), are otherwise clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the rubbed and nicked dustwrapper that has several short closed tears and some small chips to the top edge of the rear panel. Not price-clipped ($3.50 to the upper corner of the front flap). Scarce.

In 1946, Latvian-born psychologist David P. Boder travelled from Chicago, Illinois, to Displaced Persons camps ("shelter houses") in France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany to record the memories and experiences of those who lived through the Holocaust. Armed with a wire recorder and 200 spools of wire, Boder recorded 109 interviews in nine languages with Displaced Persons including Jewish concentration camp survivors, Baltic workers, and Mennonites escaping from Soviet Russia. The interviews were among the earliest (if not the earliest) audio recorded testimony of Holocaust survivors. They are today the earliest extant recordings, valuable for the spoken word (of the DP narrators and of Boder himself) and also for the song sessions and religious services that he recorded at various points throughout the expedition. Copies of the wire recordings were initially shipped to the National Institute of Mental Health but were shunted from there to the Motion Picture and Sound Division of the Library of Congress. The original wire recorder spools are currently unlocated. Eight of the interviews, six of Jewish victims and two of other witnesses, are translated, transcribed, and published for the first time in this volume. For more than a decade after the European expedition, Boder continued to translate the interviews. Eighty of them were eventually transcribed into English, and included in a self-published manuscript of over 3,100 pages, comprising sixteen volumes, which he privately distributed between 1950 and 1957. The volumes all appeared under the title 'Topical Autobiographies of Displaced People Recorded Verbatim in Displaced Persons Camps'. (Rachel Deblinger: After the Holocaust; Alan Rosen: David Broder and I Did Not Interview The Dead).