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Stephen D. Smith MBE [1] is a Holocaust and genocide specialist who has designed, operated and consulted for many different Holocaust memorial centres. He currently holds the UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education. [2]
Smith was born on 15 April 1967, the younger son of Eddie Smith, a Methodist minister and Marina Smith, a teacher. [3]
In 1995, he founded the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire with his elder brother James Smith, and together they also founded Aegis Trust in 2000.
Upon graduating from the University of London in 1991 with a degree in Theology, Smith attended the Oxford Centre for Hebrew Studies in 1992, and received his Doctorate from the University of Birmingham in 2000, having focused his postgraduate study on the "Trajectory of Memory", examining how Holocaust survivor testimony developed over time. His autobiography, Never Again Yet Again, A Personal Struggle with the Holocaust and Genocide, was published in 2009. [4] [ better source needed ]
Smith has consulted on the development of a number of Holocaust memorial and education centres overseas, including Lithuania's House of Memory and the Cape Town Holocaust Centre in South Africa, which was heavily inspired by a visit from the founder, Myra Osrin, to the UK Holocaust Centre.
In 2004, Smith was project Director of the Kigali Memorial Centre, the genocide memorial museum and education centre in Kigali, Rwanda. Aegis was commissioned by Kigali City Council to establish the Kigali Memorial Centre, which opened in 2004 and still operates today.
Smith is a member of the United States delegation to the Inter-governmental Taskforce on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF), founded by Sweden, the US and the UK on the personal initiative of the then Swedish Prime Minister, Göran Persson. [5] He was a member of the British delegation from 1998, when the ITF was founded, moving to the American delegation in 2009 following appointment to the USC Shoah Foundation Institute (see below). Over 20 countries are now part of the ITF. Smith was an advisor to Göran Persson's series of intergovernmental conferences, the Stockholm International Forum. The four conferences addressed, The Holocaust (2000); Combatting Intolerance (2001), Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation (2002), Preventing Genocide (2004).
One early outcome of the work of the ITF was the development of the UK's national Holocaust Memorial Day, inaugurated in 2001. Smith played a central role in this and served as an advisor to the Home Office on the Day's development over the years, and was appointed the inaugural Chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust in November 2004 when the decision was made that the running of the Day should be handed over to a non-Governmental charitable body.
Smith has developed a reputation for his contribution to the field in the UK and abroad.[ citation needed ] Recognition for his work includes being made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (2000), the Interfaith Gold Medallion (2000), and Honorary Doctorate in Law from the University of Leicester (2007) and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Nottingham Trent University (2010).
Smith's publications include Making Memory: Creating Britain's First Holocaust Centre, Forgotten Places: The Holocaust and the Remnants of Destruction, and The Holocaust and the Christian World, which he co-edited with Carol Rittner and Irena Steinfeldt. Smith also co-produced "Death March: A Survivor's Story", which was broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Four. He is currently working on a memoir of his interviews with Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter.
On 15 August 2009, Smith took up the post of executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, the archive of Holocaust survivor testimonies initiated by Steven Spielberg in 1994. He left that position in 2021.
On 21 July 2010, almost twenty years after the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre was founded, Smith, his brother James and their mother Marina were each awarded honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) by Nottingham Trent University. [6]
Smith converted to Judaism in 2023. [7]
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history. It is dedicated to helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.
Gedenkdienst is the concept of facing and taking responsibility for the darkest chapters of one's own country's history while ideally being financially supported by one's own country's government to do so. Founded in Austria in 1992 by Andreas Maislinger, the Gedenkdienst is an alternative to Austria's compulsory national military service as well as a volunteering platform for Austrians to work in Holocaust and Jewish culture-related institutions around the world with governmental financial support. In Austria it is also referred to as Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service provided by the Austrian Service Abroad. The Austrian Gedenkdienst serves the remembrance of the crimes of Nazism, commemorates its victims and supports Jewish cultural future. The program is rooted in the acknowledgment of responsibility by the Austrian government for the crimes committed by National Socialism.
The Austrian Service Abroad is a non-profit organization founded by Andreas Hörtnagl, Andreas Maislinger and Michael Prochazka in 1998, which sends young Austrians to work in partner institutions worldwide serving Holocaust commemoration in form of the Gedenkdienst, supporting vulnerable social groups and sustainability initiatives in form of the Austrian Social Service and realizing projects of peace within the framework of the Austrian Peace Service. Its services aim at the permanence of life on earth. The Austrian Service Abroad carries and promotes the idea of the House of Responsibility for the birthplace of Adolf Hitler in Braunau am Inn. The Austrian Service Abroad is the issuer of the annually conferred Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award. The program is funded by the Austrian government.
Beth Shalom, also named the National Holocaust Centre and Museum, is a Holocaust memorial centre near Laxton in Nottinghamshire in England. Opened in 1995, it is England's only dedicated Holocaust museum, though there is also a permanent exhibition at London's Imperial War Museum and another in Huddersfield, the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre, which was opened in 2018. The centre was founded by brothers James and Stephen Smith following a 1991 visit to Israel during which a trip to Yad Vashem changed the way they looked at history and the Holocaust.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial day on 27 January that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in the genocide of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, an attempt to implement its "final solution" to the Jewish question. 27 January was chosen to commemorate the date when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945.
Laxton is a small village in the civil parish of Laxton and Moorhouse in the English county of Nottinghamshire, situated about 25 miles northeast of Nottingham city centre. In 1981 Laxton was sold to the Crown Estate, which is committed to maintaining the open field system. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 Census was 489.
The Aegis Trust, founded in 2000, is the British NGO which campaigns to prevent genocide worldwide. Based at the United Kingdom's Holocaust Centre, which opened in 1995, the Aegis Trust coordinates the UK Genocide Prevention All-Party Parliamentary Group, funds the Genocide Prevention Group (Canada) and is responsible for the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda, which commemorates the 1994 genocide and is central to education of a new generation about the dangers of ethnic division.
The Kigali Genocide Memorial commemorates the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The remains of over 250,000 people are interred there.
Richard Gable Hovannisian is an Armenian American historian and professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is known mainly for his four-volume history of the First Republic of Armenia.
Randolph Lewis Braham was an American historian and political scientist, born in Romania, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the City College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A specialist in comparative politics and the Holocaust, he was a founding board member of the academic committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Washington, D.C., and founded The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies at the Graduate Center in 1979.
The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum is a history education museum in Dallas, Texas, in the West End Historic District at the southeast corner of N. Houston Street and Ross Avenue. Its mission is to teach the history of the Holocaust and advance human rights to combat prejudice, hatred, and indifference. It features climate-controlled archives and a research library to expand education.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1998 which unites governments and experts to strengthen, advance and promote Holocaust education, research and remembrance worldwide and to uphold the commitments of the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust. The IHRA has 34 member countries, one liaison country and seven observer countries.
Holocaust studies, or sometimes Holocaust research, is a scholarly discipline that encompasses the historical research and study of the Holocaust. Institutions dedicated to Holocaust research investigate the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary aspects of Holocaust methodology, demography, sociology, and psychology. It also covers the study of Nazi Germany, World War II, Jewish history, religion, Christian-Jewish relations, Holocaust theology, ethics, social responsibility, and genocide on a global scale. Exploring trauma, memories, and testimonies of the experiences of Holocaust survivors, human rights, international relations, Jewish life, Judaism, and Jewish identity in the post-Holocaust world are also covered in this type of research.
USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, a compelling voice for education and action. It was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing his Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. In January 2006, the foundation partnered with and relocated to the University of Southern California (USC) and was renamed the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. In March 2019, the institute opened their new global headquarters on USC's campus.
Pinchas Gutter is a Holocaust educator and frequent guest lecturer for the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Centre and the March of the Living and March of Remembrance and Hope programs. He is one of the pioneers of an innovative project called Dimensions in Testimony in which a life-sized interactive biography will be wheeled into classrooms, lecture halls and museums. The idea is that the audience asks questions and pre-recorded statements from the video Gutter will respond – much as if talking to the real person. Gutter has also been the subject of a number of films by directors such as Fern Levitt, Eli Rubenstein, Stephen D. Smith and Zvike Nevo.
Fred Mfuranzima is a Rwandan-African writer, artist, poet and peace activist.
Dov Forman is an English best-selling author, spokesperson and social media creator.
Edward Mosberg was a Polish-American Holocaust survivor, educator, and philanthropist. During the Holocaust, he was held by the Nazis from 14 years of age in Kraków Ghetto, Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, Auschwitz concentration camp, Mauthausen concentration camp, and a slave labor camp in Linz, Austria, that was liberated by the US Army in 1945. Nearly all of his family were murdered in the Holocaust.
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