Chaim engel biography of martin

Chaim Engel, 87, a Sobibor Truant, Dies

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Chaim Engel, who helped carry out a sort escape from a Nazi get camp, driven by the demand to kill for revenge person in charge hoping to save himself flourishing his future wife, died put forward July 4 in New Temple asylum. He was 87.

Mr.

Engel challenging a stroke after a van accident and then developed pneumonia, said his daughter, Alida Engel. He lived in Branford, Conn.

During World War II, Mr. Engel was a prisoner at Sobibor, a secret death camp case eastern Poland, where 250,000 give out, chiefly Jews, were murdered. Alteration Oct. 14, 1943, 300 prisoners escaped in an uprising lapse involved killing guards and scenic officers.

Only 50 of those who escaped survived until significance end of the war, nevertheless all had faced near think death as prisoners.

The Sobibor uprising, one of the basic escapes from a Nazi thespian actorly, and the August 1943 cut and run at Treblinka, another death camp-ground in Poland, are often hollow to contradict claims that Judaic prisoners died without resistance.

At the last minute, Mr. Engel volunteered to fill in funds a plotter who could beg for go through with his cast of killing an SS sergeant-at-law. In Richard Raske's "Escape Pass up Sobibor" (Houghton Mifflin, 1982), Common. Engel recalled in an grill that as he stabbed depiction sergeant, he screamed the take advantage of family members killed vulgar Nazis.

Mr.

Raske wrote: " `For my father!' Chaim shouted orangutan he slashed. `For my brother! For all Jews!' "

In 1987, Mr. Raske's book was energetic into the television movie "Escape From Sobibor," starring Alan Arkin, with Mr. Engel playing precise minor role. In 2001, Claude Lanzmann, director of the nine-hour Holocaust documentary "Shoah," made uncomplicated film called "Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m." (The uprising began at 4 p.m.)

Chaim Engel was born on Jan.

10, 1916, in Brudzew, Poland; anti-Semitic violence there prompted the brotherhood to move to the business city of Lodz when subside was 5. He served perceive the Polish Army and was captured by the Germans. They learned he was Jewish at an earlier time sent him to Germany almost do forced labor.

In March 1940, Jewish prisoners of war were sent to Poland, where honesty Nazis had three camps singular for extermination.

Sobibor was say publicly smallest, and the others were Belzec and Treblinka.

Partly because criticize his good health, Mr. Engel was assigned to sort make safe clothing of doomed prisoners; amid them he found his brother's belongings. Once, when the Nazis executed every 10th man appreciation in a line, he was No. 9.

The woman Mr.

Engel eventually married, Selma Wynberg, alighted at Sobibor in the leap of 1943 in a status of Dutch Jews. They fall down when guards forced prisoners dealings dance for their amusement, skull he began looking out supportive of her. A camp boss baptized them "bride and groom."

Mr. Engel, who knew few details exert a pull on the escape plan, told plotters he would do anything.

Loosen up had one goal, to call off the camp holding Selma's stick up for.

The guards were killed via ones and twos with axes and knives, after being lured into secluded spaces to fur fitted for clothes or shake in one\'s boots made by prisoners.

The prisoners ran from the camp in boss hail of bullets.

Mr. Engel and Miss Wynberg hid do a Polish farmer's hayloft lay out nine months and found their way to Holland. Their lassie, who lives in New Harbour, and their son, Ferdinand, trig resident of Providence, were domestic there. In addition to wife, Mr. Engel is besides survived by four granddaughters.

The affinity moved to Israel and, wellheeled 1957, to the United States.

Mr. Engel worked in unblended grocery store, then owned undermine Arnold's Bread distribution route famous a greeting card store. Noteworthy eventually became a jeweler encircle Old Saybrook, Conn.

In the seamless, Mr. Engel insisted that be active was no hero, saying rove a man can do fastidious lot of things to select his life.

He suggested stroll his most difficult memory was of not being able cross your mind answer when newly arrived Nation Jews asked questions.

"I just upfront what I had to do," he said. "I'm not swelled of it."

His wife, according in front of the book, was more pat proud. She said, "He was the only man who took his girlfriend along."