Chaim's family came from a small town where his father owned a textile store. When antisemitic pogroms broke out in Brudzew, the Engels moved to the industrial city of Lodz. Chaim was then 5 years old. In Lodz he attended a Jewish school that also provided a secular education. After finishing middle school, Chaim went to work at his uncle's textile factory.
1933-39: Chaim's neighborhood in Lodz was predominantly Jewish, so most of his friends were Jews. As a young adult he began his compulsory army service. On September 1, 1939, only two weeks before his tour of duty was scheduled to end, the Germans invaded Poland. After a few weeks he was taken as a POW. One German captor learned Chaim was Jewish, but he didn't shoot him. Chaim was taken to Germany for forced labor.
1940-44: In March 1940 all Jewish POWs were returned to Poland. Chaim was deported to the Sobibor killing center in the summer of 1942. In October 1943 a small group of prisoners revolted. Chaim stabbed their overseer to death. With each jab Chaim cried, "This is for my father, for my mother, for all the Jews you killed." The knife slipped, cutting Chaim, covering him with blood. Chaos took over; many prisoners ran out the main gate. Some stepped on mines. Some gave up and didn't run at all. Chaim grabbed his girlfriend and they ran into the woods.
Chaim hid in the Polish woods with his girlfriend, Selma. After the war they married and lived in Europe and Israel. The Engels settled in the United States in 1957.
Item ViewThe Germans established a ghetto in Dokszyce in late 1941. Rachel hid during the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942, and she and her mother escaped to another ghetto. When the second ghetto was about to be liquidated, they escaped again. Rachel and her mother joined a band of partisans in the forest. She helped her mother to cook, and also cleaned weapons. Rachel and her mother tried to leave Europe when the war ended. They eventually arrived in the United States, in 1947.
Item ViewLisa was one of three children born to a religious Jewish family. Following the German occupation of her hometown in 1939, Lisa and her family moved first to Augustow and then to Slonim (in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland). German troops captured Slonim in June 1941, during the invasion of the Soviet Union. In Slonim, the Germans established a ghetto which existed from 1941 to 1942. Lisa eventually escaped from Slonim, and went first to Grodno and then to Vilna, where she joined the resistance movement. She joined a partisan group, fighting the Germans from bases in the Naroch Forest. Soviet forces liberated the area in 1944. As part of the Brihah ("flight," "escape") movement of 250,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors from eastern Europe, Lisa and her husband Aron sought to leave Europe. Unable to enter Palestine, they eventually settled in the United States.
Item ViewIn 1939, as Chaim's tour in the Polish army was nearing its scheduled end, Germany invaded Poland. The Germans captured Chaim and sent him to Germany for forced labor. As a Jewish prisoner of war, Chaim later was returned to Poland. Ultimately, he was deported to the Sobibor camp, where the rest of his family died. In the 1943 Sobibor uprising, Chaim killed a guard. He escaped with his girlfriend, Selma, whom he later married. A farmer hid them until liberation by Soviet forces in June 1944.
Item ViewIn 1939, as Chaim's tour in the Polish army was nearing its scheduled end, Germany invaded Poland. The Germans captured Chaim and sent him to Germany for forced labor. As a Jewish prisoner of war, Chaim later was returned to Poland. Ultimately, he was deported to the Sobibor camp, where the rest of his family died. In the 1943 Sobibor uprising, Chaim killed a guard. He escaped with his girlfriend, Selma, whom he later married. A farmer hid them until liberation by Soviet forces in June 1944.
Item ViewThe Germans captured Chaim, a soldier in the Polish army, as they invaded Poland in 1939. They first sent Chaim to Germany for forced labor, but as a Jewish prisoner of war, he was returned to Poland. Ultimately, Chaim was deported to the Sobibor camp, where the rest of his family died. In the 1943 Sobibor uprising, Chaim killed a guard. He escaped with his girlfriend, Selma, whom he later married. A farmer hid them until liberation in June 1944.
In this clip, Chaim refers to [Gustav] Wagner, Sobibor's deputy commandant.
Item ViewBen was one of four children born to a religious Jewish family. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. After the Germans occupied Warsaw, Ben decided to escape to Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. However, he soon decided to return to his family, then in the Warsaw ghetto. Ben was assigned to a work detail outside the ghetto, and helped smuggle people out of the ghetto—including Vladka (Fagele) Peltel, a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), who later became his wife. Later, he went into hiding outside the ghetto and posed as a non-Jewish Pole. During the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943, Ben worked with other members of the underground to rescue ghetto fighters, bringing them out through the sewers and hiding them on the "Aryan" side of Warsaw. From the "Aryan" side of Warsaw, Ben witnessed the burning of the Warsaw ghetto during the uprising. After the uprising, Ben escaped from Warsaw by posing as a non-Jew. Following liberation, he was reunited with his father, mother, and younger sister.
Item ViewVladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.
Item ViewEsther was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Chelm, Poland. In December 1942, she was deported from a work camp to the Sobibor killing center in occupied Poland. Upon arrival at Sobibor, Esther was selected to work in a sorting shed. She sorted clothing and the possessions of the people killed at the camp. During the summer and fall of 1943, Esther was among a group of prisoners in the Sobibor camp who planned an uprising and escape. Leon Feldhendler and Aleksandr (Sasha) Pechersky were the leaders of the group. The revolt took place on October 14, 1943. German and Ukrainian guards opened fire on the prisoners, who were unable to reach the main gate and thus had to try and escape through the minefield around the camp; about 300 escaped. Over 100 of them were recaptured and shot. Esther was among those who escaped and survived.
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Yves' mother died when he was 7, and he grew up in the home of his grandfather, who was the chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Paris. Yves became a successful businessman, owning a chain of department stores. He was an avid mountain climber and liked to play tennis and to race cars and motorcycles. As a young man, Yves did his military service in France's alpine corps.
1933-39: In 1934 Yves married Paulette Weill, and the couple had two daughters, Nadine in 1935 and Francelyn in 1939. He was called up by the French army and served for five months as a lieutenant when war threatened to break out in 1938 during the crisis over Czechoslovakia. Yves was mobilized again when France declared war on Germany in September of 1939.
1940-44: Yves was captured during the German invasion of France. He escaped, but stayed in France to fight. Making use of his store inventory in Saint-Etienne, he organized a quartermaster corps in unoccupied Vichy France that issued food, blankets, tents and clothing to the Free French Resistance. He helped hide Jewish children in convents and farms, and to hide Canadian and American paratroopers. Yves headed the resistance in Savoy. After the Allies landed in France in 1944, he was captured by the Germans.
Yves was tortured and killed in Etercy on June 24, 1944. He was 35 years old. He was posthumously awarded France's War Cross, Military Medal and Legion of Honor.
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Born to a Jewish family, Willy left Poland at age 20 and emigrated to Palestine. He became active in the workers' organization to end the British mandate there. His activities led to his arrest on May 1, 1931. After serving a two-year prison sentence, Willy was expelled from Palestine.
1933-39: In 1933 Willy left Palestine for Austria, where he joined the ranks of the workers' movement. The economic depression in Austria gave momentum to the movement's cause, and Willy and his friends were closely watched by the police. When the Germans occupied Austria in 1938, the Gestapo tried to arrest him. With the help of his friends, Willy escaped to France, and made his way to Paris in search of a job.
1940-44: In mid-1940 Willy found work with a furrier in Paris, who was forced to make clothing for the German army. Willy organized the workers and trained them in sabotage; although many were arrested by the Germans, Willy would counter the arrests by recruiting more people. In May 1943 Willy joined the armed resistance group, Franc-Tireurs et Partisans. On October 27, 1943, he was arrested while attacking a German military convoy. He was tortured, but never disclosed the names of his fellow fighters. He was sentenced to death by firing squad.
Willy was executed on Wednesday, February 21, 1944.
Item ViewAfter the Germans annexed Austria in 1938, Leo attempted to flee. He eventually reached Belgium. In 1940 he was deported to the St.-Cyprien camp in France but escaped. In 1942 Leo was smuggled into Switzerland but was arrested and sent back to France, this time to the Rivesaltes and Drancy camps. He and a friend escaped from a train deporting them to Auschwitz in Poland. Leo joined the French underground in 1943. He arrived in the United States in 1947.
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