Egyptian doctor recognised as Righteous Among the |
Yad Vashem recently recognised Dr. Mohamed Helmy and Frieda Szturmann as Righteous Among the Nations. Dr. He lmy, an Egyptian physician living in Berlin and Szturmann, a local German woman, worked together in the heart of Nazi Germany to help save a Jewish family during the height of the Holocaust. Dr. Helmy is the first Egyptian to be recognised as Righteous Among the Nations. Yad Vashem is currently searching for the rescuers’ next of kin to posthumously honor their relatives in a ceremony and present them with the certificate and medal of the Righteous. The Rescue Story Dr. Mohamed Helmy was born in Khartoum in 1901 to Egyptian parents. In 1922, Helmy went to Germany to study medicine and settled in Berlin. After he completed his studies, he went to work at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, but was dismissed in 1937. (A study conducted by the Robert Koch Institute in 2009 showed that the Institute was heavily involved in Nazi medical policy). According to Nazi racial theory, Dr. Helmy was defined as a Hamit or Hamitic (the descendants of Ham, son of Noah) – a term adopted from 19th century racial science and used to define the natives of North Africa, including ancient Egyptians, the Horn of Africa, and South Arabia. Please login or register to see the full article
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