'Songs Of The Holocaust' Discovered On 70-Year-Old Archived Recording (LISTEN)

When David Boder, a professor of psychology from the Illinois Institute of Technology, traveled to Europe in 1946, he interviewed 130 Jewish Holocaust survivors. He created an invaluable 120 hours of recordings documenting one of the most devastating episodes of human history.

But he used a wire recorder to make the record, a new method at the time, but a technology that has since become antiquated. Some of Boder's work was archived at the University of Akron since 1967, but researchers were unable to access the history contained in the spools of steel wire.

It remained locked away in this form until only recently.

The university announced Thursday that its researchers created a device to play and digitize the audio recordings, including a spool that recorded "Henonville Songs," performances in German and Yiddish that were believed to be lost.

The recording was found in a mislabeled canister.

"I think it is one of the most important discoveries from our collections in our 50-year history," said David Baker, the Margaret Clark Morgan executive director of the Cummings Center where the research was done. "The songs were recorded at a refugee camp in Henonville, France. The Nazis made the prisoners sing some of these songs as they ran to their forced labor sites and back each day."

He added: "That we could give the world the melody to a song sung by those sentenced to their death through forced labor during one of the most unspeakable horrors of the 20th century is remarkable."

Unsurprisingly, researchers and scholars around the world have requested access to the recordings.

"These songs, in the voices of those subjected to unspeakable cruelty, are a reminder of the power of memory, the value of history and the indomitable human spirit," notes Baker. "Hearing them sing again after 70 years of silence gives the world a greater understanding of the circumstances and experiences of those who were witnesses to a dark chapter in human history."

You can hear portions of a song in the video below:

Though the university had access to other wire recorders, none were the right fit for Boder's spools. One of the people leading the team to find a compatible model wound up discovering it on eBay. But it needed a lot of upgrades.

"The recorder no longer uses vacuum tubes or rubber tires, and is mostly built from new parts," said James Newhall, a senior multi-media producer at the university, who coordinated the search for the right recorder.

To turn the spools into digital recordings, the center turned toJohn Endres, a media specialist and producer.

"It felt like I was helping in some way to bring these voices to the present, voices that had become somewhat lost to the historical record," he said. "The discovery of this single canister holding a lost recording means that these songs can be heard again, they can be studied and they can inform us in a new way about the experiences, the joys and the frustrations of these displaced persons."

Photo credit: YouTube screenshot/University of Akron