Helen Bamber

Sitterback to top

• Helen Bamber (1925-2014), Therapist and human rights campaigner. Sitter in 1 portrait.

Artistback to top

• Nancy Honey (1948-), Photographer. Artist or producer of 14 portraits, Sitter in 1 portrait.

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• 100 Pioneering Women, p. 155 Read entry

  Helen Bamber (1925–2014) was a psychotherapist and human rights activist. In her late teens, she found work as a secretary and administrator to the National Association of Mental Health (now Mind), which treated soldiers and airmen returning from war. At the age of twenty, Bamber volunteered for the Jewish Relief Unit and was sent to the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, following liberation, to work with Holocaust survivors. She remained there for two years. She was subsequently appointed to the Committee for the Care of Children from Concentration Camps and assisted in the care of 722 orphans who had been incarcerated at Auschwitz concentration camp. She helped establish the first medical group at Amnesty International, and, in 1985, she founded the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture. At the age of eighty, she founded the Helen Bamber Foundation to expand her work with torture survivors and to provide care, safety and dignity to victims of all forms of human rights violations. Bamber was named European Woman of Achievement in 1993 and awarded an OBE in 1997.

Placesback to top

• Place made and portrayed: United Kingdom: England, London (offices of the Helen Bamber Foundation, Museum Street, London)

Subject/Themeback to top

• Flowers and plants

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