Overview

The remarkable story of Mohammed Helmy, the Egyptian doctor who risked his life to save Jewish Berliners from the Nazis. One of the people he saved was a Jewish girl called Anna. This book tells their story.The Israeli holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem has to date honoured more than 25,000 of the courageous non-Jewish men and women who saved Jewish people during the Second World War. But it is a striking fact that under the 'Righteous Among the Nations' listed at Yad Vashem there is only one Arab person: Mohammed Helmy. Helmy was an Egyptian doctor living in Berlin. He spent the entire war there, all the time walking the fine line between accommodation to the Nazi regime and subversion of it. He was also a master of deception, outfoxing the Nazis and risking his own life to save his Jewish colleagues and other Jewish Berliners from Nazi persecution. One of the people he saved was a Jewish girl called Anna. This book tells their story.Also revealed here is a wider understanding of the Arab community in Berlin at the time, many of whom had warm relations with the Jewish community, and some of whom - like Mohammed Helmy - risked their lives to help their Jewish friends when the Nazis rose to power. Mohammed Helmy was the most remarkable individual amongst this brave group, but he was by no means the only one.

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9780192893369

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This meticulous account of the Arab doctor who sheltered a Jewish girl in 1930s Berlin is a remarkable story of subterfuge and courage. [...]Steinkes history sheds a light on what he argues is a deliberately forgotten world, the old Arabic Berlin of the Weimar period, which was open, progressive and far from antisemitic and which welcomed Jewish luminaries, including Albert Einstein and philosopher Martin Buber. * Tim Adams, Book of the Week, The Observer * Anna and Dr Helmy is the thrilling and, at times, heart-stopping account of a remarkable but largely unknown story of bravery and bluffing. * Robert Philpot, Times of Israel *

Author Information

Ronen Steinke is a political commentator for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany's leading broadsheet newspaper. He has published a number of works in Germany on the Nazi period, including his biography of Fritz Bauer, the courageous German Jewish judge and prosecutor who played an instrumental role in bringing the holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann to justice, and whose story was dramatized in the 2015 film The People vs. Fritz Bauer.

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