Helen Bamber

Helen Bamber ( born May 1, 1925 in London) is a British psychotherapist who is dedicated to the assistance to Holocaust survivors and torture victims. In 2005 she founded a foundation to help victims of violence worldwide, the Helen Bamber Foundation, based in London.

Life

Helen Bamber comes from a Jewish family and grew up in London. After graduation she began studying psychology at the University of Essex. At the age of twenty, she was assigned to one of the first teams of experts of the Jewish Relief Unit ( JRU ), which adopted the survivors in concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. She stayed two and a half years in Germany and was particularly involved in a group of young survivors who were suffering from tuberculosis and should find healing and a better future in Switzerland.

In 1947 he and Helen Bamber back to England and was active in a committee of the fate of infants took him who had survived the concentration camps. During the next eight years, she moved in close collaboration with the Anna Freud Clinic in the treatment of traumatized children and young adults a professional capacity. In parallel, she studied social sciences at the London School of Economics.

Since 1958, she served as director of social care work at different hospitals and co-founder of the National Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital, which made it possible for the first time mothers during the hospitalization of her younger children to remain with them.

1961, shortly after the founding of Amnesty International ( AI ), Helen Bamber joined this organization and became head of the UK's first branch. In 1974, she helped in the establishment of the Medical Section within the ai and became its Secretary General. Here they established special assistance programs for victims of torture, which often require long-term medical and psychological care. This work she put in a leading position continued until 2002, in order to devote the patients work more closely in her resignation can.

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

Helen Bamber was married to a German survivors of the Holocaust, the marriage ended in divorce. She has two sons.

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 a number of British universities
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