Selma Engel Compare And Contrast

In 1933 events took place that would change the lives of millions of people living in Europe forever. Hitler started his reign as Chancellor of Germany, and with that came the start of what is known as the Holocaust. Around 11,000,000 people were killed in a time period of only 12 years, victims of Hitler’s concentration and death camps. Chaim and Selma Engel are two people that managed to survive one of the worst death camps and made it through the war. Through the evil they witnessed and the struggles they endured, their love was what kept them going. Their love for each other gave them hope, even when all hope seemed lost.
Selma Engel was born as Saartje Wijnberg on May 15, 1922 in Zwolle, Holland to a Jewish family. Her name was changed
The guards threw a “party” and forced the starved, weakened prisoners to dance with each other. It is during this party that Selma meets Chaim Engel. The two were forced to dance with each other for the amusement of the guards. Somehow, in a place that seems so unfitting for any hope or happiness to exist, the two fell in love.
Chaim had been at Sobibor for 11 months when he met Selma. He had served in the Polish army before the war. On September 1st, 1939 the Germans invaded Poland, just two weeks before his military tour of duty was scheduled to end. Engel was then taken as a prisoner of war to Germany and was placed in a forced labor camp. In March of 1940 he was sent back to Poland along with the other Jewish POWs. He was deported to the Sobibor Death Camp in the summer of 1942 with his family and a friend. While Chaim was selected to live his father, brother, and friend were immediately sent to the gas chamber.
From the time they met Selma and Chaim became inseparable. The guards often taunted them because of their love for each other, calling them the “bride and groom”. They worked together in a section of the camp called Camp 2. Here, prisoners