Helen Selsdon

May 9, 1933 To the Student Body of Germany History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels, and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books to the soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love…

This is part 2 of a 5-part series. Read the first entry, Egypt, here. Helen and Polly's next port of call was Lebanon. Here is how she described their visit in late April and early May 1952 to Georges Raverat, the director of the AFOB in Paris: "At Beirut I did my best to arouse the Lebanese people and their Government to a sense of responsibility in rehabilitating the blind. The School for the Armenian Blind under the management of Swiss Friends, ably directed by Mr. Karl Meyer, is…

2012 marks 60 years since Helen Keller toured the Middle East; namely, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. Helen was entranced by the Middle East and wrote about it to her friend and colleague Georges Raverat, the Director of the American Foundation for Overseas Blind (now Helen Keller International) in Paris. During her visit, Helen met leading cultural and political figures of the region, including the Egyptian writer and intellectual Taha Hussein, Queen Noor of Jordan and Golda Meir…

Helen's travels through Japan, Part 2 [Read Part 1 of Helen Keller's Travels Through Japan] Helen's fame among the Japanese people was sealed as a result of her second trip to the country in 1948. She was sent as the United States' first Goodwill Ambassador by General Douglas MacArthur as well as the Mainichi Press, an English-language newspaper that sponsored her trip. Wonderful news footage taken during her visit shows streets lined with spectators and open-air theaters teeming with…

Helen's travels through Japan A fascinating and relatively unknown story is that of Helen and Japan. Helen Keller loved the Japanese people and culture and the Japanese people loved and still love her. Helen traveled to Japan on three occasions, in 1937, 1948 and 1955. The Helen Keller Archives contains over 300 artifacts, and a disproportionate number of these are beautiful gifts that she received during those trips—the image posted below* is an exquisite tiered ceramic incense burner,…