After a long wait, first Arab 'Righteous Among the Nations' gets recognition
Dr Mohammed Helmy was finally honored at a ceremony in Berlin in Thursday
He is the only Arab Righteous Among The Nations, an Egyptian doctor that while working in Berlin, saved a family of four from the Nazi death camps. But properly honoring Mohammed Helmy has been delayed until now, because politics got in the way.
Khartoum-born Dr Helmy moved to Berlin in 1922 to study medicine and as a non-Aryan, had too suffered from the Nazi regime.
But when the granddaughter of a Jewish patient, young Anna Boros, was facing deportation, he helped her create a false identity as an Egyptian Muslim and arranged hideouts for her entire family.
Dr Helmy's bravery was recognized posthumously in 2013 by Israel’s Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, more than three decades after his death, but none of his immediate family members in Cairo were willing to accept the certificate from a Jewish-Israeli institution.
“They were flattered by the interest people take in the deeds of their relative Dr Helmy, but they were reluctant to accept any honor from the state of Israel as an institution,” explained journalist and author Ronen Steinke, who traveled to Cairo to meet with Helmy's relatives for his book “The Muslim and The Jew.”
“The argument was that the State of Israel doesn't speak for these victims, Israel did not exist at the time and of course, more or less veiled, there was opposition to the Israeli politics regarding the Palestinians,” he told i24NEWS.
But six weeks ago Yad Vashem received an email for an Israeli filmmaker working on a documentary about Anna and the Egyptian doctor -- she had found a relative that would be willing to accept the certificate, that was still waiting for collection deep inside the Jerusalem museum.
The relative was Helmy's grandnephew, 81-year-old Dr Nasser Kotby who traveled to Berlin to meet with Anna's daughter, Carla Greenspan, who flew in from her home in New York.
Dr Kotby accepted the award on Thursday night from Israeli ambassador Jeremy Issacharoff – not at the embassy, but on the neutral ground of a Berlin event venue, to avoid additional tension.
But speaking to journalists, Kotby belittled the controversy, telling of his visit to Israel in 1993 for an international medical conference, where he met Shimon Peres.
He learned only a year and a half ago about the tribute waiting to be publicly paid to his granduncle, he insisted, when journalists like Steinke started knocking on his door.
“I could not fly to Ben Gurion airport [near Tel Aviv] and say 'here I am, I want to take this certificate'. This was not the way.”
Dr Kotby will now take the Righteous Among The Nations medal to Cairo, he said, but he would much rather leave it on display in Berlin, for the tourists to see. “The public is not interested in Helmy in Egypt, they don't know him. Berlin knows him. He has been honored four times here.”
After the war, in 1947 Anna and her family immigrated to the United States but they kept in touch with their rescuer and wrote a letter to the Berlin Senate, urging it to acknowledge Helmy's courageous actions. They also visited him in Berlin several times.
“I was 12 when I first came and it was very exciting because my mother would always tell me about Dr Helmy, but I don't think at the time I truly understood what was involved and what it truly meant. I just remember it was so much fun to meet them,” Greenspan told i24NEWS.
The fact that most family members rejected the honor by Yad Vashem, she doesn't find disappointing. “They have their reasons and I'm not in a position to know those reasons. I don't live there in Egypt and if they did not feel comfortable for whatever reason, I completely understood it.”
“Dr Helmy received this award regardless of whether the family accepted it, but rather than being hidden in some archive, the family has it and they can do with it what they feel,” added Greenspan.
Kotby's willingness to attend the ceremony does not speak of a change in the attitude of other family members, noted Steinke. “The political climate in Egypt is so toxic towards Israel today, that coming here and overcoming politics really takes courage and all the more respect to him is owed.”
“Even though it happened many years ago, this has a very important message to send,” stressed Ambassador Issacharoff, “and I feel confidant that as we approach the anniversary of President Sadat to Israel and the ensuing peace treaty, this is very good message.”
An auspicious moment in Israeli-Egyptian relations? Perhaps. But when asked about it, Kotby preferred to promote another message, “that no system that uses suppression, genocide and tyranny can be tolerated. We must stop that.”
Polina Garaev is i24NEWS' Germany correspondent.