The Dinner Party.

On Thursday evening I attended an Inspiring Women’s Dinner organised by Carole Pluckrose, Artistic Director at Arc Theatre. It was inspired by Judy Chicago’s piece called The Dinner Party which represents 1,038 women in history.
There were around 70 women who attended the wonderful dinner ranging in age from 15 to 84! The 15 year old was Eliza Rebeiro who founded Lives not Knives in 2007 and has recently been awared Croydon Community Champion. The 84 year old was Helen Bamber who has worked tirelessly in human rights for over 60 years.
Helen Bamber (www.helenbamber.org ) was the speaker for the evening and was incredibly inspiring and humble. She shared stories of her both her recent work and her time in Belsen afer the liberation of the concentration camp. I was moved by the lessons that Helen had learnt in Belsen about courage, resilience, humanity and cruelty. One very vivid image was of a Belsen survivor who very near to death had held on to Helen’s arm and said “tell, tell, tell”. Helen said this taught her how important it was to people that their stories were heard and told and how important it was to bear withness to the pain of others. www.livesnotknives.com