First Arab honoured as Righteous Gentile

Stories abound of individuals saving Jews from Nazi persecution, but it is rare for the saviours to risk their own lives to do so. It is rarer still for Arabs to be so recognised. Heart-warming tale from The Times of Israel:

An Egyptian physician was honored Monday by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial as the first Righteous Among the Nations from his country, for saving a Jewish family in the heart of Nazi Germany.

The Berlin-trained Dr. Mohamed Helmy is credited with saving 21-year-old Anna Boros Gutman and her family, whom he helped starting in 1942. 

During a wave of Jewish deportation in the city, Helmy hid Gutman in a cabin he owned in Berlin-Buch, where she stayed until almost the end of World War II. Her parents and grandmother were hidden separately.

After the war, Gutman wrote, “The Gestapo knew that Dr. Helmy was our family physician, and they knew that he owned a cabin in Berlin-Buch. He managed to evade all their interrogations… he would bring me to friends where I would stay for several days, introducing me as his cousin from Dresden. When the danger would pass, I would return to his cabin.”

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First Arab proposed as Righteous Gentile 

The Muslim saviour Sardari is an exception to the rule