Alan Rosen:  Early Holocaust Testimonies Taken at Displaced Persons Camps

The USC Center on Public Diplomacy and the USC Shoah Foundation Institute welcome Alan Rosen to campus. He will be speaking about David Boder's early Holocaust testimony project.

In July 1946, Boder set sail for Europe determined to record audio testimonies from Holocaust survivors in Displaced Persons camps. In Rosen's words "His [Boder's] goals were straightforward. First of all, he wanted to preserve an authentic record of wartime suffering. Second, he was professionally interested as a psychologist in the impact of extreme suffering on personality. Third, he wanted to increase the knowledge of a post-war American public who knew little about what happened to the victims in the ghettos and in the concentration camps. And finally, he hoped that the DPs' stories could be effective in advocating on their behalf for immigration to America."

About Alan Rosen
Rosen has held fellowships at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem; the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and the Archives for the History of American Psychology, University of Akron. He has taught at universities and colleges in Israel and the United States, and lectures regularly on Holocaust Literature at Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies and other Holocaust study centers.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, educated in Boston under the direction of Elie Wiesel, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and four children. His current book projects include editing for Cambridge UP a critical introduction to Holocaust literature, collaborating with Elie Wiesel on a volume of key Holocaust documents, and researching and writing a monograph entitled, "Killing Time, Saving Time: Calendars and the Holocaust."

Rosen's latest book, The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder was published by Oxford University Press in fall, 2010.

For more event information and to R.S.V.P., please click here.