`She set off into Europe as though for war, a very small young woman in junior officer's uniform with a shield of David on her arm instead of a rank. She was not carrying a weapon." Helen Bamber was just 20 when she volunteered to work for the Jewish Relief Unit and travelled to Belsen to help the survivors of the camps.
The daughter of Jewish parents, she was reared in north London in a home well aware of the threat of the Holocaust. What she saw and heard in Belsen shaped a life which has been almost wholly concerned with fighting man's inhumanity to man.
"Anyone who went to Belsen after the war had to be preoccupied by the responsibility of the bystanders," she said many decades later. "I did not want to be a bystander."
In Belsen she first learnt to listen: "Above all else there was the need to tell you everything, over and over and over again. Sometimes it worked and you would sit with a person and rock with them, literally rock with them in a terrible kind of grief and weeping."
It is a gift which Helen Bamber has used for over 50 years to help victims of torture from many countries - Algeria, Chile, Turkey, Bosnia, Israel. The list goes on and on. She has learnt to read the meaning of scars on the human body, to draw out the stories which victims at first cannot bear to talk about, and then tell again and again.
It is why Neil Belton has called his account of Helen Bamber's life and terrible times The Good Listener A Life Against Cruelty. The Irish writer has drawn together history, reminiscence, biography of Bamber herself and of those with whom she worked, and fought, "defending the human body against torment for not speaking the right language, for containing information that might be useful; sometimes simply for being in the wrong place."
In 1985, when she was 60, Bamber started the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. Working out of two rooms in a disused London hospital, the foundation has become one of the most important institutions in helping victims and fighting the use of torture as an instrument of state policy.
The Good Listener is not an easy book to read but it is also impossible to stop reading it. The truly harrowing stories of individual cruelty are matched by evidence of the growing indifference of the Western democracies.
On the eve of the first World War, an entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica could assert "the whole subject of torture is now one of only historical interest as far as Europe is concerned". But torture has returned as what Neil Belton describes as "the bad weather of this century". The right to asylum, accepted until relatively recently by most liberal societies, has now become an immigration "problem".
It is hard to think of any book which is more timely for these opening days of the new year, when the debate about the way we treat refugees is in the headlines once again. Last week we learnt that the Government, after months of saying that it was out of the question to allow asylum-seekers to work because this would be an extra "pull factor" in attracting more refugees, is now prepared to reconsider. Our thriving economy needs more labour.
The decision has been widely welcomed, largely on the grounds that it allows us to do what is morally desirable on economic grounds. The point was well made in an editorial in this newspaper: "Where humanitarian considerations failed to move the heart of this Government on the issue of asylum seekers, it seems that economic self-interest may do the job."
Of course, it is to be welcomed that the Government is finally responding to the demands of many organisations, ranging from the ICTU to the major churches, that a more liberal regime be applied. We know that many asylum-seekers who arrive here are highly skilled and eager to support themselves.
Yet there is a grudging sub-text to the announcement, which bodes ill for the future. It is assumed that Irish people will not be prepared to accept more refugees and are deeply resentful of the public funds spent on those already here. A recent opinion poll showed that 69 per cent of voters think that only "an absolute minimum" should be allowed to enter the State.
The facts on both sides of the argument have been rehearsed again and again. Those who argue for stricter controls point to the growing incidence of racism in our cities and say this will get worse if we allow greater numbers to come in. Besides, they add, most of those who seek asylum are not really victims of torture or persecution. They are, in the main "economic migrants", hoping to improve their standard of living.
Leaving aside the appalling irony of our seeking to deny to others the economic opportunities which so many of our own people have sought in the past, the fact is that we do not know how many of those who seek asylum are fleeing from persecution, or even what constitutes persecution, for that matter. We rarely, if ever, hear their stories, which are told in conditions of secrecy. What we do know is that here, as in other states, the norms of proof of torture and mistreatment are growing ever more difficult to satisfy. Perhaps if we were to hear more of the stories of individual asylum-seekers, public attitudes would change, for there is evidence, as I would expect, that a more generous view exists. The Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, Dr Fiachra O Cealliagh, was applauded in Dublin's Pro-Cathedral on Christmas Day when he appealed for an amnesty for refugees who are already here.
We are facing a defining moment in how we choose to shape our State's future. Do we want Ireland to develop as an open and confident society, willing to share our prosperity with those less fortunate than ourselves, and able to look on these newcomers as enriching our diversity, or will we opt for a grudging, introspective view which sees outsiders as a threat, whose admission must be regulated on the most narrow of economic grounds?
We have been here before. With the benefit of hindsight, very many Irish people now regret the episode in our history when Jewish refugees were turned away on the grounds that their presence here might prove to be destabilising. We have a chance now to improve on our past.
There are powerful arguments why we should demand a higher standard of moral leadership from our politicians on this issue. Many of them are contained in Neil Belton's book, The Good Listener. I urge you to read it.