OUR MISSION

International Voice of Justice was established in 2009. Previous to the official recognition of the organization, Dr. Haakon Smith, Executive Director and Dr. Martha Smith, Artistic Director, had served as performing artists for Jewish organizations such as B’nai Brith and the United Jewish Appeal.

Haakon Smith, pianist and Martha Smith, soprano have both earned doctorates from Columbia University in New York City and have performed extensively throughout Europe and in the U.S.A. They have both served as professors on the college and university levels.

Martha is also a playwright, writer, composer and designer of opera. Her works have been performed in many nations of Europe. Among these are many related to the work of International Voice of Justice.

While completing studies in music at Columbia University the Smiths lived in an apartment complex which was home to many Holocaust survivors. As they became good friends with their neighbors, they were entrusted with the stories of their neighbors’ survival in different Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, and Auschwitz. They were permitted to record their friends’ accounts of the Holocaust which resulted in the musical drama and song cycle, “Voices of the Holocaust” based on the lives of the Bennett Avenue Survivors. The work premiered in 1997 in the YHA (Young Hebrew Association) in Washington Heights, New York City. Thus began the work of International Voice of Justice.

Projects have now been produced in many nations of Europe: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Germany, France, Slovakia and Romania. (See Productions )