Selma Engel survivor of Sobibor: never forget her story!

Born Saartje Wijnberg in 1922, Selma (she changed her name in 1957 when she moved to the United States) grew up with her three brothers in the Dutch town of Zwolle, where her parents Samuel and Alida had built up and owned a successful kosher hotel. Selma later recalled her childhood as idyllic: her family was religious and a main provider of kosher food in the area, but Selma also had lots of non-Jewish friends. Anti-Semitism was never a problem growing up, she remembered. That all changed with the rise of Nazism, particularly after Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940. Selma was able to finish high school, but as a Jew she wasn’t allowed to go on to college. She was the last living survivor of cruel deathcamp Sobibor. (From the Jerusalem Post, December 2018)

Read more here. Sobibor has been the death camp where the family of my mother has been deported. In memory of them I placed this article. Lion Erwteman