Testimony: Eyewitnesses Speak for Action Now

Stephen Smith, PhD

USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director, moderator  

Dr. Stephen D. Smith, Finci-Viterbi Endowed Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation, is committed to making the testimony of survivors of the Holocaust and of other crimes against humanity a compelling voice for education and action. 

An adjunct Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California, he is a theologian by training. 

Smith founded the UK Holocaust Centre in England and cofounded the Aegis Trust for the prevention of crimes against humanity and genocide. He was also the inaugural Chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which runs the National Holocaust Memorial Day in the United Kingdom. Smith was the project director responsible for the creation of the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda and trustee of the South Africa Holocaust and Genocide Foundation.  

Smith has produced several documentary films. These include The Last Goodbye, an award-winning, virtual-reality film that transports viewers inside the Nazi death camp Majdanek, and The Girl and The Picture, an award-winning documentary that centers on a survivor of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China. 

Smith, who holds the UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education, lectures widely on issues relating to his expertise. His publications include Never Again! Yet Again!: A Personal Struggle with the Holocaust and Genocide. In recognition of his work, Smith has become a member of the Order of the British Empire and received the Interfaith Gold Medallion. He also holds two honorary doctorates, Honorary Doctor of Letters from Nottingham Trent University and Honorary Doctor of Laws from University of Leicester.

Kia Hays

USC Shoah Foundation, Program Manager, Immersive Innovations  

Kia Hays manages and produces the Institute’s immersive interview collections, including the Dimensions in Testimony interactive biography collection and the 360 Testimony on Location collection. Prior to the Institute, Kia worked and interned in various capacities for The USC Center on Public Diplomacy, the Wende Museum of the Cold War, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Los Angeles-based non-profit Youth Policy Institute. She received her Master’s in Public Diplomacy at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of Public Diplomacy Magazine.

Martha Stroud

PhD USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Associate Director and Senior Research Officer 

Martha Stroud manages the day-to-day operations of the Center for Advanced Genocide Research, the academic arm of the USC Shoah Foundation, which advances innovative interdisciplinary research on the Holocaust and other genocides and promotes use of the Visual History Archive in research and teaching. She joined the Center in 2015 after earning her PhD in Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley. An anthropologist with special interests in the anthropology of genocide, psychological anthropology, and Indonesia, Martha’s research focuses on the Indonesian mass killings and detentions of 1965-1966, their aftermath, and the ways in which the events of 1965-1966 continue to emerge in daily life in Indonesia today, over 50 years after the killings first began.

Luis Moreno Ocampo

Senior Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court 

Luis Moreno-Ocampo was the first Prosecutor (June 2003-June 2012) of the new and permanent International Criminal Court. His office was involved in twenty of the most serious crises of the 21^st century including Iraq. Korea, Afghanistan, and Palestine. He conducted investigations in seven different countries, presenting charges against Muammar Gaddafi for crimes against humanity committed in Libya, the President of the Sudan Omar Al Bashir for genocide in Darfur, the former President of Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo, Joseph Kony and the former Vice President of the Democratic Republic of Congo Jean Pierre Bemba. Previously, Moreno-Ocampo played a crucial role during the transition to democracy in Argentina, as the deputy prosecutor in the “Junta trial” in 1985 and the Prosecutor in the trial against a military rebellion in 1991. He was a Visiting Professor at Stanford University and Harvard University. After the end of his tenure as ICC Prosecutor, Moreno Ocampo was the chairman of the World Bank Expert Panel on the Padma Bridge project. He is now in private practice at a New York law firm. 

Freddy Peccerelli

Director of the Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG)

Fredy Peccerelli is a forensic anthropologist and director of the Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG), which he helped found in 1997. FAFG is a not for profit organization that carries out forensic examinations into killings during the Guatemalan civil war and genocide in the second half of the 20th century. FAFG has over 2,000 cases under investigation and works nationally with families and communities requesting forensic investigations to establish the place of mass graves, family member identification, and as a part of criminal investigations. 

Peccerelli and his team have recovered thousands of sets of victims’ remains and reunited them with their families. They have discovered hundreds of mass graves that offer proof that a genocide occurred and have provided forensic evidence to the Guatemalan Justice System and Public Prosecutor’s Office in 1,400 anthropological experts’ reports related to legal cases of the conflict. 

Through his work at FAFG, Peccerelli is motivated to obtain justice for the victims and their families, and to shine light on some of the least-studied, most obscured mass atrocities in recent history.

Raees Tinmaungou

Founder and Board Chair, Rohingya Human Rights Network 

Raees (also spelled Raïss) is the founder and board chair of the Rohingya Human Rights Network (RHRN). He has led campaigns, petitions, peaceful rallies, and new chapter formations of RHRN across Canada and in the refugee camps. He has led community engagement for Rohingya exhibits at the Montreal Holocaust Museum, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and le Musée National de Beaux Arts de Québec. His Op Eds have been published in several leading Canadian newspapers including the Toronto Star, Le Soleil, Ottawa Citizen, Hill Times, etc. Following the 2017 massacre in Rakhine, Raees volunteered for 1 month at the refugee camps with USC Shoah Foundation, after which he presented at the Canadian Senate, as well as at the House of Commons. Apart from leading the Rohingya Human Rights Network, Raees also leads a network of schools and vocational training centers at the Rohingya refugee camps and villages.

Nursiman Abdureshid

A Uyghur refugee and activist now living in the United States