“…neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor: I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:16)
In synagogues around the world this past weekend, Jews read the story of Cain, who cynically asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Now, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum has recognized one man whose answer to that question was “yes.”
Dr. Mohamed Helmy and his good friend, Frieda Szturmann, are being honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the museum, a designation that acknowledges the bravery of individuals who risked everything to do what was right and save Jewish lives in Nazi Germany. What makes this story unique is that Helmy is the first Egyptian — indeed, the first Arab — to receive this recognition.
Helmy was born in Egypt in 1901. In 1922, he moved to Germany to study medicine. Upon completing his studies, he began working at the Robert Koch Institute, which is Germany’s national public health institute. He was dismissed in 1937, and due to his Arab roots, was not permitted to marry his German fiancée under Nazi rule. In 1939 he was even arrested, along with other Egyptians in Berlin, but was later released for health reasons.
Despite all this, Helmy was an outspoken opponent of Nazi policies. When Jewish deportations began in 1941, Helmy brought friend and patient Anna Boros (now Gutman), then 21, to hide in his cabin in Berlin’s Buch neighborhood. He also supported her mother and stepfather, Julie and Georg Wehr, as well as her grandmother, Cecilie Rudnik, throughout the war.
“A good friend of our family, Dr. Helmy…hid me in his cabin in Berlin-Buch from 10 March until the end of the war. As of 1942, I no longer had any contact with the outside world. The Gestapo knew that Dr. Helmy was our family physician, and they knew that he owned a cabin in Berlin-Buch,” Anna Gutman wrote after the war. “He managed to evade all their interrogations. In such cases 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….Dr. Helmy did everything for me out of the generosity of his heart and I will be grateful to him for eternity.”
One such friend who took Gutman in was Frieda Szturmann, who also hid Rudnik for over a year, sharing her own meager rations with the elderly woman.
Due to the remarkable efforts of both Helmy and Szturmann, all four family members survived the war and later emigrated to the United States. They never forgot their saviors, however, and throughout the 1950s and ‘60s they wrote letters on behalf of the two to the Berlin Senate. The letters were found in the Berlin archives and recently submitted to Yad Vashem, prompting their recognition as heroes.
The motto of Yad Vashem’s campaign to honor these heroes is “Whosoever saves a single life, saves an entire universe.” (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5) Indeed, the exhibition at the museum is called “I am my Brother’s Keeper.” The museum is now searching for Helmy and Szturmann’s next of kin in order “to posthumously honor their relatives in a ceremony and present them with the certificate and medal of the Righteous.” Until then, Helmy’s medal and certificate of recognition are on display in the exhibition. According to the museum, Dr. Helmy remained in Berlin after the war and was finally able to marry his fiancée. He died in 1982. Frieda Szturmann passed away in 1962.
