The Good Listener
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.88 (751 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0571295266 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 492 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-01-26 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
In 1985, at the age of sixty, she set up an organisation devoted to helping victims of torture and to bearing witness against the fact of torture. 'Essential reading A horrifying account of the worst that human beings can do to each other. It is also a haunting unusual narrative of the post-war world. This 2012 edition offers a new introduction by the author.'The story of Bamber's life acts as a framework or prism through which some of the worst events of this century of horrors are addressed.' Times Literary Supplement'Belton writes beautifully about an ugly subject with compassion but also with clarity.' Scotsman. This is her story. Since then her life has been involved with the worst side of the last half-century. Neil Belton's synthesis of biography and history is masterly.' Anthony Storr, Sunday TimesHelen Bamber went to Belson in 1945 to work with survivors of the camp. She was just twenty
Will the accused please stand . Dudley Ristow The author narrates the life and times of Helen Bamber a 20 year old London-born Jewish girl who goes to Germany, some 4 months after the close of WW2, to Germany. Her first destination is Belsen-Bergen where a couple of thousand survivors still lived, clawing their way back to life. Belsen is her epiphany and sets this indomitable woman on a life-time mission of assisting tortured people and putt. "I'm bewildered by Amazon's rating system." according to A Customer. Why does this book have only 2.5 stars? One German reader doesn't like it, the other reviewer doesn't think it's political enough, and every reviewing publication gives it a very high recommendation. It seems that the stars are very simplistic and robotic.. Marquismarq said A striking work. The remarkable person that is Helen Bamber should not obscure Neil Belton's achievment in rendering her and her work. The psychology of the survivor is still being plumbed and rediscovered with modern twists (AIDS for example) and this book lends tremendous insight to how to approach and understand trauma that is at times sacred in its intimate sadness. It is is also extremely well written.
Belton also delivers searing indictments of governments still inflicting torture--indictments strengthened by the wrenching stories of some of the people Bamber has helped, including Adriana Borquez, tortured under Pinochet's regime in Chile, and people who have disappeared, such as Bill Beausire, with whom Borquez was imprisoned in 1975. Bamber's lifetime of work--protecting children in hospitals, exposing unscrupulous doctors, and international human rights activism--is interwoven with capsule biographies of people who have influenced her, including Maurice Pappworth, whose book Human Guinea Pigs enraged the medical profession and resulted in the gifted physician's blacklisting. Delaney. Blending history, biography, and moral