The search engine Google celebrated Egyptian doctor Mohamed Helmy by dedicating a plaque on its official logo and an information page accessible to all Arab countries. Mohamed Helmy was born in Khartoum in 1901 to Egyptian parents and emigrated to Germany in 1922 to study medicine, settling in Berlin. It is said that his father was an officer in the Egyptian army at that time.
After completing his studies, he joined the Robert Koch Institute but was expelled in 1937 because he was not of Aryan descent. He faced racial discrimination and was prevented from working in the state public health system at that time. He was also prohibited from marrying his German fiancée and was arrested in 1939 along with several Egyptians with the intention of exchanging them for British prisoners. However, he was released a year later due to Britain's unwillingness to exchange prisoners.
Helmy was honored for his role in saving a Jewish family during the Holocaust, being awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" in 2013 by Yad Vashem, the Israeli institution responsible for documenting the atrocities of the Holocaust and commemorating its victims. He is considered the first Arab to receive this title, though the recognition was delayed at first due to his family's refusal to attend the ceremony and accept the award because of the frosty relations between Israel and Egypt. Ultimately, they agreed to attend, provided the ceremony took place at the German Foreign Office with representatives from both Israel and Egypt present.
