For Carla Greenspan, the news was upsetting: A relative of the man who saved her mother’s life during the Holocaust was spurning an award from Yad Vashem.
“It’s a sad legacy for him if this is truly how they feel,” Greenspan said from her home on Manhattan’s East Side. “Their great-uncle went out of his way and risked his life to save my mother.”
Mohamad Helmy, an Egyptian who was working as a physician in Berlin when World War II broke out, helped hide the family of Anna Gutman (nee Boros), Greenspan’s mother. For his bravery, Yad Vashem recently recognized Helmy as Righteous Among the Nations — the first person from the Arab world to be so designated since the award’s establishment in 1963.
But Mervat Hassan, a Cairo-area resident and wife of Helmy’s unnamed great-nephew, told the Associated Press that the couple would not accept the award because it came from an Israeli institution.
“If any other country offered to honor Helmy, we would have been happy with it,” Hassan was quoted as saying.
Greenspan says she doesn’t want to “rush to judge” Helmy’s relatives, since they might face harm or ostracism in Cairo for accepting the award.
She shared with “Seeking Kin” several documents related to her family’s connection to Helmy. All were contained in an old suitcase that her brother Charles has kept since their parents’ death; Anna Gutman died in 1986. Greenspan also provided photographs that show Helmy.
Despite the spurning by Helmy’s kin, Yad Vashem said it was searching for other relatives so it can have a recognition ceremony.
Helmy and a friend or colleague, Frieda Szturmann, hid the family — Gutman; her mother and stepfather, Juliana and Georg Wehr; and her grandmother, Cecilie Rudnik — in multiple locations in and around Berlin from March 1942 until the war ended more than three years later. The family later moved to the United States.
Dieter Szturmann said in an interview that he would gladly accept Yad Vashem’s medallion and certificate in memory of his grandmother, who died in 1963 at age 66.
“For my grandmother, it was very dangerous to save these people, so [she] was very proud, and I am, too,” said Szturmann, 67, a retired computer technician for a Berlin high school.
Among the documents shared by Greenspan was the copy of a letter her mother wrote after settling in America. It was sent to the West Berlin municipality and conveyed the circumstances of the heroism displayed by Helmy and Szturmann. Gutman’s letter recently was discovered in Berlin’s archives and forwarded to Yad Vashem, setting in motion the process leading to the decision to honor the two.
A document dated June 10, 1943, and typed on the letterhead of Berlin’s Central Islamic Institute attests to Gutman being a Muslim. Helmy forged the document, Greenspan said.
Greenspan remembered traveling with her parents and brother in 1969 to visit Helmy and his wife, Emmi, in their Berlin home. In 1980, Greenspan and her mother visited the Helmys again, this time with Greenspan’s husband, Barry. Gutman kept in touch with Helmy until his death, Greenspan said.
For much of the war, Gutman was hidden in a bunker on Helmy’s property. Her grandmother was sheltered by Szturmann, who apparently lived near Helmy’s country home. The Wehrs were sheltered elsewhere.
Only after the Nazis’ defeat did the Helmys marry, since their relationship was forbidden under the regime’s Aryan-purity laws. The couple never had children, Greenspan said.
While Helmy is the first person from the Arab world to be designated by Yad Vashem, more than 60 Muslims who saved Jews in Bosnia, Albania and the then-Soviet republics have been recognized, said Irena Steinfeldt, director of the Righteous Among the Nations department.
Despite the Hassans’ refusal to accept the honoring of Helmy, Yad Vashem is pursuing several avenues, including Egypt’s embassy in Tel Aviv, to locate additional relatives.
“Once a family member has been located, then of course we will have a recognition ceremony and will be able to present his family with the certificate and medal in his honor,” said Susan Weisberg, a Yad Vashem official.
For now, she said, the items are being displayed in an exhibition, “I Am My Brother’s Keeper,” that marks the half-century since the Righteous Among the Nations program’s launch.
The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. Email Hillel Kuttler at [email protected] if you know the whereabouts of Mohamad Helmy’s relatives, or if you would like him to write about your search for relatives or friends.