Helen Bentwich
| Helen Bentwich | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Helen Franklin 6 January 1892 Notting Hill, London, England |
| Died | 26 April 1972 (aged 80) |
| Residence |
Hampstead, London, England Sandwich, Kent, England Jerusalem, Israel |
| Education |
St Paul's Girls' School Bedford College |
| Occupation | Social worker |
| Political party | Labour Party |
| Spouse(s) | Norman Bentwich |
| Relatives |
Herbert (uncle) Stuart Samuel (uncle) Hugh Franklin (brother) Ellis Arthur Franklin (brother) Benedict Birnberg (nephew) |
Helen Caroline Bentwich CBE (6 January 1892 – 26 April 1972) was a British philanthropist and politician.
Helen Franklin (later Bentwich) was born in Notting Hill, London, into a prominent Jewish family. Her father was a merchant banker and her uncles Herbert and Stuart Samuel were leading politicians. Her siblings included Hugh Franklin, a suffragist, and Ellis Arthur Franklin, another banker and eventual vice-principal of the Working Men's College. She attended St Paul's Girls' School and Bedford College (London).
Bentwich served a forewoman at the Woolwich Arsenal in 1916. She fought for the rights of women workers and tried to form a trade union. Forced to resign, she became an organiser for the Women's Land Army.
Bentwich and her husband moved to Palestine in 1919, where he was appointed attorney-general under the British Mandate. She organised nursery schools, formed arts and crafts centres, and became honorary secretary of the Palestine Council of Jewish Women. She had mixed feelings about later developments in the region:
"I think of the thousands of Arabs, many of them friends of old, now leading wasted lives on the refugee camps on the other side of Jerusalem. And despite my deep admiration for the achievements of Israel, I feel infinitely sad as I remember the Jerusalem where I once lived and the hopes that I had then for a peaceful and united Palestine."
Her nephew, lawyer Benedict Birnberg, wrote that she "never acquired a handle and always cold-shouldered Zionism."
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