This sparks some interest in me, as I don't see what is surprising about the things she spoke about. Why/how are folks surprised? They expected more racism?
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 for all time to the German soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and compassion for the German people.
I acknowledge the grievous complications that have led to your intolerance; all the more do I deplore the injustice and unwisdom of passing on to unborn generations the stigma of your deeds.
Do not imagine that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here. God sleepeth not, and He will visit His judgment upon you. Better were it for you to have a mill-stone hung around your neck and sink into the sea than to be hated and despised of all men.
https://www.openculture.com/2017/05/helen-keller-writes-a-le...
As a broader concept, this is also an excellent lesson in recognising a missing message. If something is talked about and praised, but always left confusingly vague ... either the speaker is hiding something, or they're aware that they cannot directly mention the subject or events. Either way, it's an invitation to do some digging.
Sometimes you find a Helen Keller. Sometimes you find a Samuel F. B. Morse.
Foreign conspiracy against the liberties of the United States
They want to teach nice parts of her and dont want to teach off-putting ideas of her. That is the whole point of that chapter in his book.
Her life seems a clear case of outstanding achievement that was only possible with outstanding support.