cover image The Good Listener: Helen Bamber, a Life Against Cruelty

The Good Listener: Helen Bamber, a Life Against Cruelty

Neil Belton. Pantheon Books, $27 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-375-40100-8

Belton capably and sympathetically renders the gripping drama of international human rights activist Helen Bamber's life and work, having been accorded full access to his subject and her associates. Raised in Britain by Jewish parents of Polish extraction, Bamber (b. 1925) was deeply affected by the newspaper accounts of Hitler's atrocities that her father read to her as a child. Her lifelong commitment to human rights began in 1945 when she traveled to Germany as a member of the Jewish Relief Unit and saw for herself what Holocaust survivors had been through. Back in Britain, she married a German Jewish refugee and gave birth to two sons before involving herself in activism, focusing on mothers' rights in hospitals, and midwifing the publication of a passionate expos of unscrupulous doctors who performed experimental medicine on children and helpless adults. After her divorce, Bamber became deeply involved in Amnesty International and worked for those who had been tortured in Algeria and Chile. Belton's meticulous research and eye for detail inform the many anecdotes highlighting his subject's fight against the use of torture. In 1985, Bamber left Amnesty International and founded the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, under whose auspices she testified in Israel on behalf of a Palestinian prisoner in 1993. Although Belton includes negative comments from one of Bamber's sons that imply neglect, and criticism from colleagues who call her a ""complete dictator,"" Bamber's documented altruism and heroism eclipse any personal defects. (Apr.)