The family of the late Egyptian physician, Mohamed Helmy, has declined a certificate of honor and a medal from the Israeli Yad Vashem Foundation at a commemoration of the Holocaust for saving a Jewish family from death when he was in Berlin during World War II.
Mervat Hassan, a 66-year-old relative, said on Thursday that Dr. Helmy helped people without regard to their nationality or religion.
“The family would have been delighted to be honored by any country other than Israel,” she said.
Born in Khartoum in 1901 to an Egyptian father and a German mother, Dr. Helmy went to Berlin in 1922 to study medicine and worked there until 1938.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
