Selma Wynberg Engel – Survivor of the Death Camp Sobibor Uprising – Leaves Us

[photo:  Sobibor memorial]

Two months and twelve days after the prisoner uprising at Treblinka, inmates at Sobibor revolted against the murderous Nazis and attempted to escape.  It was October 14, 1943.  Of the 600 inmates in the camp that day, 200 survived[1].

Sobibor was the second of the triumvirate of Operation Reinhard Death Camps built by the Nazis in Poland (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka).  It began gassing Jews in April of 1942 (Treblinka began July 23, 1943).  Over its 18 months of operation, 165,000 humans were murdered there.[2]

One of the prisoners to escape on that day in October of 1943 was Selma Wynberg.  She died on Tuesday in East Haven, Connecticut at the age of 96.   The New York Times has a beautiful obituary in today’s paper:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/obituaries/selma-engel-dead.html

After the escape, Selma married another Sobibor escapee, Chaim Engel, and together they moved to Israel in 1951 and then to America in 1957, settling in Connecticut.

You may be familiar with the 1987 movie Escape from Sobibor.  Selma’s character was played by Ellis van Maarseveen.  Also, a 2010 biography was written about Selma by Ad van Liempt, called Selma: De vrouw die Sobibor overleefde (Selma: The Woman Who Survived Sobibor); (ISBN 978-90-74274-42-5, which was made into a documentary on Dutch television (Selma is from the Netherlands).

Sadness over the loss of the survivors must spur us on to continue to tell their stories and learn from their lives.

May her memory be a blessing.

[1] Arad, Yitzchak, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Appendix A, p. 391.

[2] Id.  Compare to Treblinka – 870,000 murdered over 13-16 months.