Helen Bamber

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Helen Bamber OBE (born May 1, 1925 in London ; † August 21, 2014 there ) was a British psychotherapist who dedicated herself to helping Holocaust survivors and victims of torture . In 2005 she set up a foundation to support victims of violent crime worldwide, the Helen Bamber Foundation , based in London.

Life

Helen Bamber came from a Jewish family and grew up in London. After graduating from high school, she began studying psychology at the University of Essex . At the age of twenty she was assigned to one of the first expert teams of the Jewish Relief Unit (JRU), which took care of the survivors in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . She stayed in Germany for two and a half years and was particularly committed to a group of young survivors who were suffering from tuberculosis and who were supposed to find a cure and a better future in Switzerland .

In 1947 Helen Bamber returned to England and was active on a committee that looked after the fate of the young children who had survived the concentration camps . Over the next eight years she trained in the therapy of traumatized children and young adults in close cooperation with the Anna Freud Clinic . At the same time she studied social sciences at the London School of Economics .

Since 1958, she has been the head of social care at various clinics and co-founder of the National Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital , which for the first time enabled mothers to stay with their younger children during their hospital stays.

In 1961, shortly after Amnesty International (AI) was founded, Helen Bamber joined the organization and became director of its first UK subsidiary. In 1974 she helped establish the Medical Section within AI and became its General Secretary. Here she also established special aid programs for victims of torture who often need long-term medical and psychological care. She continued this work in a leading position until 2002, so that after her resignation she could devote herself even more to patient work.

In 2005, she established the Helen Bamber Foundation to support people who became victims of human rights crimes.

Helen Bamber was married to a German Holocaust survivor ; the marriage was divorced. She became the mother of two sons. Bamber died on August 21, 2014 in her native London at the age of 89.

Honors

  • Officer of the Order of the British Empire
  • European Woman of Achievement, 1993
  • Award for a Lifetime's Achievement in Human Rights, 1998
  • Beacon Fellowship Prize, 2006
  • Eight honorary doctorates from various UK universities

literature

  • Neil Belton: The Ear Witness. Helen Bamber - A Life Against Violence . Unabridged edition, Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-15653-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Douglas Martin: Helen Bamber, Therapist to Torture Victims, Dies at 89. Obituary in The New York Times, August 27, 2014 (accessed August 28, 2014).
personal data
SURNAME Bamber, Helen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British human rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 2014
Place of death London