Brave Arab doctor who hid Jews in Hitler's Berlin posthumously honoured by Yad Vashem
The award comes years after attempts were made to contact members of the Helmy family.
After years of delays, an Egyptian doctor is set to receive a posthumous award for his part in saving the lives of Jews during the Second World War.
Mohammed Helmy will be presented the "Righteous Among the Nations" medal and certificate at a ceremony in Berlin later today (26 October).
The doctor who saved several Jews from persecution during the war, was awarded the honour in 2013, but the Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial were unable to contact surviving family members.
Members of the Helmy family were uneasy about accepting the award because of the connections it has to Israel, following years of conflict between Egypt and the state.
Helmy had hidden a Jewish woman, Anna Boros, inside a property he owned while at the same time he found places for other members of the Boros family as well as providing medical care for Anna's parents.
But a film-maker who was inspired by Hemy's heroics in Nazi Berlin, tracked down family members for her project.
Taliya Finkel made contact with Helmy's great-nephew, Dr Nasser Kotby, who will be accepting the award in Berlin.
Finkel's film, "Anna and the Egyptian Doctor", brings together the two families including the daughter of Boros, the US-born Carla Gutman Greenspan.
Speaking to the Local, Finkel said: "He [Nasser Kotby] admires Helmy, who was like a father to him, I told him this was the way to eternalise the story."
The award will be handed to Kotby at the German foreign ministry by Israel's ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff.
