The Arab doctor who risked his life for a Jewish family during the Holocaust

Dr Mohamed Helmy is the only Arab to be honoured by Yad Vashem as a righteous among the nations – yet the author of a biography says his actions were not unique

WHEN GERMAN-JEWISH journalist Ronen Steinke first learned about the sole Arab to be named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, he had no idea that there was much more to the long-forgotten story of Dr Mohamed Helmy.

An Egyptian-born urologist who was honored by the Jerusalem-based Holocaust memorial and museum in 2013, Helmy risked his life hiding a Jewish teenage girl named Anna Boros in Berlin during World War II.

Part of the little-known prewar Arab community in the German capital, Helmy disguised Anna as his headscarf-wearing Muslim niece and assistant, Nadia. When Nazi suspicions increased, his schemes became more elaborate. One involved converting Anna to Islam and marrying her off to a friend, Abdel Aziz Helmy Hammad.

Their story is the subject of Steinke’s new book, “Anna and Dr Helmy: How an Arab Doctor Saved a Jewish Girl in Hitler’s Berlin,” published by Oxford University Press and translated by Sharon Howe.

“What surprises me is that the story is not unique – several Arabs helped Jews during the Holocaust,” Steinke, who first read about Helmy in a small news item, says over Zoom. “Of course, there were many Muslims in the Balkans, in Bosnia.But what is striking is that [2013] was the first time Yad Vashem, Israel’s official institute for Holocaust remembrance, actually decided to nominate [Helmy] and accept the facts. There was an incredible amount of politics around this, an incredible amount of resistance.”

Steinke felt that tension when he visited present-day branches of both families: Anna’s in New York and Helmy’s in Cairo. Anna, who married after the war and became Anna Gutman, stayed in contact with Helmy until his death in 1982.

FULL STORY The Arab doctor who risked his life for a Jewish family during the Holocaust (Haaretz)