Bassem Youssef
speaker
1,048 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Apr 2024
last heard 5 Jun
Bassem Youssef’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And that book was translated into English called Anna and Dr. Helmi. And that book tells the incredible story under Nazi Germany where Arabs went in droves to Berlin in 1920s after the First World War in the Weimar Republic, and they became doctors and engineers and journalists for two reasons. Number one, they're cheap, very cheap because of the inflation.
And two, a lot of the Arab nationalists didn't want to send their kids to England or France because they were the occupiers. And Dr. Helmy was the hero of that. He's an Egyptian doctor. And that's why I kind of like, I personally kind of connected with him. And he went to medical school, didn't find a place to live. So he lived in the Jewish ghetto, like many Arabs.
He didn't find a school to work at, a hospital to work in. So he worked in a Jewish hospital. So these are, there was a who lived with the, and actually the first director of the Berlin Mosque with a Jewish convert who converted to Islam and he was a gay activist. I'm telling you, this is like a crazy story. And this is all, this is not a fiction story.
This is not, this is actually like a non-fiction. It's written actually based on the statement, the documents of the Nazis and Gestapo. Dr. Helmy, He was in this hospital and the Nazis came in and they killed and tortured and beat up the Jewish doctor. And they made him the head of his department. Then he was, so now he's surrounded by Nazi doctor. They didn't touch him because he was an Arab.
There was kind of like a thing between Germany and the Arabs because they wanted to appease to them in order to have kind of a grassroot base, in the Arab world where he want to go next. And this is why 1934, 1935, the racial laws of Nuremberg, they had a name change. First, they were called anti-Semitic. Then they changed into anti-Jewish because also Arabs were Semitic.
So they wanted to appease the Arabs. Now, what happened to Dr. Helmy when that happened to him? He would go back to the ghetto And he would see the apartments next to him, the Jewish apartment become more and more and more flooded with people because they were moving Jews and pushing them and putting them together, pushing them to the side.
And each flat, each apartment, instead of one family, it would have three, four, six, seven families. And he was there going at home and he looked he was there, this is where the people he grew up with, he lived with, and now he's seeing that kind of discrimination just because he's an Arab.
And then he started to kind of like atone for, like because he felt responsible because he wasn't treated the same way, and he started to go and treat Jewish people in their homes because they couldn't go to hospitals. And then one family gave them his daughter. It's like, this is Anna, save her.
He took her, pretended that she's his niece, put a hijab around her, taught her Arabic, called her Nadia, my daughter's name, by the way. And he hid her in plain sight for seven years in front of the Nazis as his nurse. It's an incredible story.
And then not just that he went to prison, and then he went out and he formed with the Arab people that was in prison with him, a network that saves 300 Jews. See that kind of story? This is the Jews that were living in the Arab world. I'm not saying that the Jews living in the Arab world was living like an incredible life.
Of course, as a kind of a minority, they did not have like the full power of their full advantages of the rule. That's normal. But we had this kind of a relationship. before Israel was erected in 1948. And then of course, everybody looked at Jews at that time as fifth column, and of course, the nationalistic regimes used that. And this is why what Biden said,
was very dangerous when he said, if there is no Israel, no Jew in the world will feel safe. You are the leader of the free world. You are the president of the United States. Do you mean that you are telling me that the Jews in your country, in the United States of America are not safe? That is wrong on two levels.
Number one, America historically and right now is more safe to Jews in the world than anybody. They are safer than the Jews in Israel. They never had pogroms or the Holocaust like you wrote. They live here a good life, not perfect life, but they are better.
Second of all, if you're the president and you're telling that a group of people will not feel safe unless there's a different one, you are already feeding into their fifth column. They're like, you're Russian. You come from there. And there is a group of laws in the Russian constitution that says that Russia will protect its citizens everywhere in the world.
What happens if the president says like, oh, you're Russians. You're protected by your own country. You don't belong here. This is terrible.
But what would a Jewish person in Beverly Hills or in Brooklyn feel if he hears that? You are already telling people you need to be loyal to Israel. I mean, Israel is a foreign country. I am sorry, but Israel is a foreign country. Israel is a client country that we sponsor and it should actually be responsible and held accountable for what they do.
It is terrible, but like, I mean, the systemic annihilation of Jewish people under the Nazi, that is like a carefully engineered, thoughtful plan, it was terrible. It was kind of like the human ingenuity put into something that is very evil. But also, it is not just that happened.
We need to remember that Otto Frank, the father of Anna Frank, has his visa, refugee visa, rejected by the United States. There's a lot of people that were rejected by the United States, rejected by other European countries, and then they were pushed into Palestine.
So you have to put yourself between, like, and the Arabs, okay, we're sitting here, okay, come, and then, all right, you don't have a home or a country anymore. That kills you. I mean, you see, if I'm not an Arab, and you give me that kind of piece of terrible human trash, it's like, oh my God, that is terrible.
But then, I'm an Arab, it's like, yes, I'm so sorry, but what do I have to do with that? Why is that my fault? The persecution of the Jewish people have started since the eighth and ninth century because they were first anti-Christians, They were like criminal immigrants. They were like conspirators.
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