
Chaim Engel
Nació: 1916, en Brudzew, Polonia
Recuerda la sublevación de Sobibor y su escape [Entrevista: 1990]
We knew there were already Germans killed. We knew already it's going on, so we just hoped that nobody unexpectedly comes to a place where he doesn't supposed to come and finds out what happened. If that is it, then we all killed and lost. So somehow we are lucky with that. The...we killed these Germans wherever we worked and, uh, we...everything went according to, to the plan, 'til we came to the main gate. Now we could...people ran...ran all over, so the whole camp knew already what's going on by then, so some ran on the mines, got killed. Some people didn't ran at all. They gave up. They didn't want to run. They just gave up. They, they just, uh, waited 'til they get killed. They...but the younger people, most of them, and whoever was courageous enough to run, they ran away. And then a lot ran on the main gate. Now we started to run and we were next to a barrack and then I saw [SS Sergeant Karl] Frenzel with a machine gun, and he started to shoot. And more people were running and I, I wanted to hold back because afraid for the machine gun, and I figured, "Here is dead. Here is maybe something." So I pulled Selma's hand and we ran through and somehow, some fell, and we made it through the gate.
We knew there were already Germans killed. We knew already it's going on, so we just hoped that nobody unexpectedly comes to a place where he doesn't supposed to come and finds out what happened. If that is it, then we all killed and lost. So somehow we are lucky with that. The...we killed these Germans wherever we worked and, uh, we...everything went according to, to the plan, 'til we came to the main gate. Now we could...people ran...ran all over, so the whole camp knew already what's going on by then, so some ran on the mines, got killed. Some people didn't ran at all. They gave up. They didn't want to run. They just gave up. They, they just, uh, waited 'til they get killed. They...but the younger people, most of them, and whoever was courageous enough to run, they ran away. And then a lot ran on the main gate. Now we started to run and we were next to a barrack and then I saw [SS Sergeant Karl] Frenzel with a machine gun, and he started to shoot. And more people were running and I, I wanted to hold back because afraid for the machine gun, and I figured, "Here is dead. Here is maybe something." So I pulled Selma's hand and we ran through and somehow, some fell, and we made it through the gate.
Los alemanes capturaron a Chaim, un soldado en el ejército polaco, cuando invadieron Polonia en 1939. Inicialmente lo mandaron a Alemania para realizar trabajos forzados, pero como era prisionero de guerra judío fue mandado de vuelta a Polonia. Finalmente fue deportado al campo de Sobibor, donde el resto de su familia murió. En la sublevación de Sobibor en 1943, Chaim mató a un guardia. Se escapó con su novia, Selma, con quien luego se casó. Un granjero los escondió hasta la liberación en junio de 1944.
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