Selma Engel papers

Selma Engel (1922-2018) was born Saartje Wijnberg in Groningen, Netherlands, to Samuel Wijnberg and Alida (Nathan) Wijnberg. She moved with her parents and three older siblings, Abraham, Maurits and Marthyn, to Zwolle in 1929, where her parents ran a kosher hotel. The family initially remained in Zwolle following the German occupation, and Selma's father died of natural causes in 1941. Her brother Abraham married and moved to Utrecht, where his family survived the war in hiding. Alida, Marthyn, Maurits, and his wife Betje all perished at Auschwitz. Selma avoided deportation to Auschwitz by hiding, but her group was denounced, and Selma was arrested, imprisoned in Amsterdam, transferred to Vught and Westerbork and deported to Sobibór in April 1943. At Sobibór she met her future husband, Chaim Engel (1916-2003), who was born in Brudzew, Poland, and raised in Łódź. He was captured by the Germans while serving in the Polish Army and was sent to Germany for forced labor before being transferred to Sobibór. Selma and Chaim participated in the Sobibór revolt and escaped on October 14, 1943. They were hidden by Polish Christians Adam and Stefka Novak on a farm in Plisków until liberation by the Soviets, and Selma gave birth to a baby boy named Emiltje. They stayed briefly in Chełm before finding their way to Zwolle via Odessa, but their baby died en route. They moved to Israel in 1951 and immigrated to the United States in 1957.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Funding Note: The cataloging of this collection has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Funding Note: The accessibility of this collection was made possible by the generous donors to our crowdfunded Save Their Stories campaign.

Selma Engel donated the Selma Engel papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1999 and 2007. The accession formerly cataloged as 2007.69 has been incorporated into this collection.