Chaim Engel, 87; One of 300 Who Escaped Nazi Death Camp

Chaim Engel, 87, one of the 300 prisoners who escaped the Nazi death camp at Sobibor in eastern Poland during World War II, died July 4 in New Haven, Conn., of complications from a stroke and pneumonia.

Born in Brudzew, Poland, Engel served in the Polish army but was captured by the Germans, who assigned him to a forced-labor detail. In March 1940 he was sent to Sobibor.

Engel learned of the plot for the mass escape, which occurred Oct. 14, 1943, and at the last minute volunteered to fill in for a participant who could not carry out the assignment to kill an SS guard.

As recounted in the 1982 book “Escape From Sobibor” by Richard Rashke, Engel screamed the names of relatives who had been killed by the Nazis as he stabbed the guard to death.

Engel escaped from the camp along with the woman who would become his wife, Selma Wynberg. They hid in a Polish farmer’s hayloft for nine months before making their way to the Netherlands and eventually to Israel.

Of the 300 who escaped the camp, only 50 lived to see the end of the war. About 250,000 people, primarily Jews, were killed at Sobibor.

Engel and his wife came to the United States from Israel in 1957. He found work as a grocer, a bread distributor and, eventually, a jeweler in Connecticut.