The Wonder of Their Voices
The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder
Alan Rosen
Reviews and Awards
"Alan Rosen has written an important and masterful study that will be indispensable reading for anyone with a serious interest in oral history, Holocaust testimony, and the human encounter with trauma and disaster."--Biography
"The Wonder of Their Voices is a beautifully written, thought-provoking account of the interview project. It will be relevant both to courses on oral history and also to courses dedicated to Holocaust testimony."--The Year's Work in Critical & Cultural Theory
"In this carefully nuanced study, Alan Rosen gives [David] Boder's pioneering work the attention it deserves...Rosen s book significantly enriches and complicates our understanding of postwar responses to the Holocaust by bringing to life an era in which psychologists, anthropologists, and historians all struggled to figure out just what to do with such testimonies."--Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
"Nothing seems more important and meaningful to survivors than to share their experiences. In this volume, the reader will find memories that will enrich his or her understanding of an era filled with pain and anguish."--Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize-winning author of Night
"As the great ethnographer S. An-ski restored the lost lore of the East European shtetl, and as the martyred historian Emanuel Ringelblum documented the life and death of the Warsaw ghetto, David Boder rescued the living voices of the witnesses to the Holocaust. Thanks to his unique position as an insider-outsider, as an American in Paris, he alone understood how to capture their story before it was stifled or went stale. Through his meticulously told story, Alan Rosen has secured a permanent place for David Boder in the gallery of heroic and visionary fieldworkers."--David G. Roskies, Jewish Theological Seminary
"Alan Rosen has done us all a favor. Most voices are lost to history. In writing The Wonder of Their Voices Rosen introduces us to David Boder and his pioneering work that joined the technology of voice recording with the experience of trauma. Rosen's research is thorough and illuminating and adds a new and important chapter to the social history of the mid-twentieth century."--David B. Baker, Archives of the History of American Psychology
"In his skilfully written book, Alan Rosen provides the first in-depth study of the earliest voice recordings collected in 1946, many from Holocaust survivors, and of the man behind this unique project. An essential study for anyone who wants to understand what the Holocaust meant for the victims and how their early voices resonated."--Jürgen Matthäus, director of Applied Research, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
"[An] insightful analysis."--Journal of American History