Having been to the terrible Auschwitz camp to bear witness to the sufferings of the  Jewish people, I salute the unbelievably courageos  stories of people like Dr. Mohamed Helmy who protected jewish friends not in some far away country but at Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany.

Many thanks to Robert Satloff for his stubborn efforts to bring the Holocaust to the Arab public and to celebrate the memories of Arab Righteous among the Nations.

I would like to add this personal recognition of a certain “anonymous” Suzanne:  a working-class lady whom I met during my first years in Paris. She told me that, a kid at the time, she used to take food to a jewish lady whom her mother, a simple ‘concierge’, had hidden from the Nazis. I asked if she had told her story to some Jewish organization after the war. I never forgot her answer: “No, why would I? It was normal that we helped her, she was our neighbour”!  (“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” “Matthew 5:3).

Pierre Akel

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