Chaim Engel
- Brutal Revenge of Hero of Great Escape from Sobibor - Holocaust - Sobibor Uprising

24 October 2022

Category: Nazi Victims

Chaim Engel was born on the 10th of January 1916 in Brudzew, Poland. The second world war began on the 1st of September, 1939, only 2 weeks before Chaim’s tour of duty in Polish compulsory army service was scheduled to end. The German occupation of Poland was exceptionally brutal. When in March 1940 all Jewish prisoners of war were returned to Poland, Chaim Engel was one of them. He then got a job at a farm near Lublin. It is estimated that the Germans killed between 1.8 and 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians during World War II. In addition, the Germans murdered at least 3 million Jewish citizens of Poland. In November 1942 Chaim Engel was sent so Sobibor.

About 250,000 victims were murdered in this killing center. When Chaim’s transport arrived in Sobibor, the German ordered him to step out of the column. 18 or 20 people from the entire transport were picked out. Chaim’s brother was not chosen. Partly because of his good health, Chaim was assigned to sort through clothing of the doomed prisoners. The systematic deportation of Dutch Jews to the death camps started in the summer of 1942. In April 1943 Selma Wijnberg arrived in Sobibor. She would become Chaim’s girlfriend.

Important evidence

The next day the Sobibor prisoners found all their clothes full of blood. Chaim found a note in a pocket which said: In September 1943 twenty Jewish Red Army prisoners of war, the soldiers who had the necessary expertise to pull off an escape, arrived at Sobibor on a transport from the Minsk Ghetto and were selected for labor. One of them, Alexander Pechersky, would become a leader of the revolt which began late in the afternoon on the 14th of October 1943. The first to kill was Johann Niemann. One of the targets was Rudolf Beckmann who was to be killed by 2 inmates, but in the last minute one of them got scared and did not want to go.

Chaim Engel, knowing that there was no turning back because too many Germans were dead, volunteered to kill Beckmann in his office Chaim and a kapo named Pozyczki went to the administration building where they found Beckmann behind his desk. While Pozyczki restrained Beckmann, Engel stabbed their overseer with a bread knife and with every stab Chaim cried, "This is for my father, for my brother, and for all the Jews you killed." Beckmann tried to fight back causing Engel's knife to slip, cutting his own hand and covering him with blood. But this did not stop him. When Beckmann was dead, the two, not having enough time to better hide his body, pushed Beckmann under the desk and took his rifle. When Chaim came out, Selma, his Dutch Jewish girlfriend, was there and cleaned his face which was covered with Beckmann’s blood and put something on his wound. In total 11 SS officers were killed by the rebels.

Great Escape from Sobibor

Chaos then took over; prisoners had to escape by climbing over the barbed wire fences or running out the main gate through a mine field under heavy machine gun fire. Some stepped on mines. Some gave up and didn't run at all. Chaim Engel belonged to those who did. He grabbed his girlfriend Selma and ran to the main gate. They made it outside and ran into the woods. After running the whole night, they made it only 6 kilometers from the camp. One day in June 1944, starving, frightened and infested with lice, they approached a farmhouse and asked the farmer if he would be willing to hide them.

The farmer dressed Selma as an old lady and put Chaim on a wagon, covered with branches, and drove them to his brother who was living about 10 kilometres away in a better, more isolated location. They lived for 9 months in a hayloft of a barn, without being able to go outside and always scared that they might be found or turned over to the police. They were liberated by Red Army on the 23rd of July 1944. They emigrated to the Netherlands, then to Israel in 1951 and then to the USA in 1957 where Chaim started his own business and became a jeweller. Until the end of their lives, Chaim and Selma remained in contact with the Poles who had saved their lives and kept helping them financially as much as they could. There were many tears shed for Chaim and Selma Engel.

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