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Selma Engel: "We went three days and three nights to Sobibor." | |||
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Selma Wijnberg Born 1922 Groningen, Netherlands 
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Selma was the youngest of the Wijnberg's four children, and the only daughter. When she was 7, her family left Groningen to start a business in the town of Zwolle [in the Netherlands]. There her parents ran a small hotel popular with Jewish businessmen traveling in the area. Every Friday there was a cattle market, and many of the cattle dealers came to the Wijnberg's hotel for coffee and business.
1933-39: At home we were observant of Jewish tradition because my mother was religious. Our hotel observed the Jewish dietary laws. At the end of Friday evening prayers, we'd gather at home around the table and sing Hebrew songs. We'd also go to synagogue every Saturday and return home to a sumptuous meal. I was very active in Zionist activities and attended Zionist camps every summer. 1940-44: The Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. In 1943 I was deported to the Sobibor death camp, where I was one of a few kept alive to work. At the end of my first day at Sobibor we gathered for roll call in the open area of Camp #1. There was a fire from Camp #3; the stench of burning flesh was overwhelming. Someone asked me, "Do you know what that fire means?" I shook my head. He explained it was the funeral pyre of our transport. Then the Germans ordered us to dance in couples, while a prisoner played the violin. To her knowledge, Selma was the only native Dutch inmate who survived the Sobibor extermination camp. After the war she married. In 1957 she and her husband settled in the United States. |
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Selma (Wijnberg) Engel Born 1922 Groningen, the Netherlands 
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We went three days and three nights to Sobibor. Uh, when we stopped sometimes the train, in every freight wagon is a little window on top, and everybody tried to look through it, so when you had chance to look through it, and you saw people was, was standing like, and they did like that, and we thought they were just an...anti-Jews, and they know we, we Jews didn't like us, but we had no idea that they told us that we go to our death. And, every time when the train stopped, the Germans start shooting on top of the train, and with dogs around us, and it was very panicky, and, uh, it was very scary, and we hope, you know, we, we girls, we really stuck together, and we helped each other to stay a little bit in good mood. After three days and three nights, we thought we were in Russia, everybody looked so poor, and, uh, we had no idea where we were, and then we come on and we see the big sign, Sobibor, and when we came in, everything looks very nice, little windows and flowers and, and, uh, the houses were painted green and red, and, it, it looks very nice, and when they opened the doors, these big doors that we had to go out, they start screaming and hitting with the whips, and, uh, we had to go out and out, and, all, all the people, and there was a little trolley, a little wagon what, uh, the coal miners use that goes, you can, uh, uh, rip it open that people can easy go out, so all the people that couldn't walk, they throwed them in there, and also children what got lost from their parents, they had to go in the trolley, and this trolley went straight to the gas chamber. | ||
| Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. | ||||
