Selma Engel-Wijnberg

Selma Engel-Wijnberg
Selma Engel-Wijnberg (left) visiting Westerbork, 2010
Born	Saartje (Selme) Wijnberg (1922-05-15) 15 May 1922 (age 94) Groningen, Netherlands
Residence	Branford, Connecticut, U.S.
Spouse(s)	Chaim Engel
Children	3
Awards	Knight of the Order of Oranje-Nassau

Selma Engel-Wijnberg, also Saartje (Selme) Wijnberg Engel, (born 15 May 1922) is a Dutch Jewish Holocaust survivor. She escaped successfully from Sobibor and survived the war. Engel-Wijnberg emigrated to the United States from Israel in 1957 with her family, and settled in Branford, Connecticut. She returned to Europe only to testify against the war criminals of Sobibor extermination camp.

Wijnberg was born in Groningen, Netherlands. She was raised in Zwolle where her parents owned and managed the Hotel Wijnberg. She was 16 and a half years old in 1939 when the Second World War broke out. The Germans rolled into the Netherlands in May 1940. In September 1942 she first hid in Utrecht, and later in De Bilt. While hiding she used the name "Greetje van den Berg". She was rounded up on 18 December 1942, and two months later transferred to Camp Vught, then to Camp Westerbork and finally to Sobibor on 9 April 1943. Wijnberg survived the selection and was assigned to the Sonderkommando unit in Lager II sorting clothes of the victims of gassing. The labourers lived mainly on food stolen from the Holocaust trains because the rations they received from the Germans were too small to sustain life. In the sorting barracks Wijnberg met her future husband.

During the Sonderkommando revolt in Sobibor on 14 October 1943, she escaped with Chaim Engel, a Polish Jew from Brudzew (10 January 1916 – 4 July 2003). The two had met and fallen in love at Sobibor. Armed with a knife, the couple fled under gunfire through the main gate and the forest. They were rescued by the Poles and hid for nine months in the attic of a farm until the retreat of Nazi Germany from occupied Poland in July 1944 during the Red Army counter-offensive. The couple married, and she became pregnant. They journeyed through Poland via Chełm and Parczew, where their son Emiel was born, then to Lublin. They crossed the Ukraine by train to Chernivtsi and to Odessa. They left by boat for Marseille, France. During the journey, Emiel died. His body was buried at sea near Greece. From Marseille they travelled by train to Zwolle and returned to Selma's parents' home, Hotel Wijnberg.