The Third Generation Keeps Holocaust Story Alive, & Relevant

A granddaughter of Holocaust survivors helped New Haven commemorate that genocide by tying it to other horrors in history.

The granddaughter, Tagan Engel, was the keynote speaker Sunday at an annual communal Yom HaShoah (or Holocaust) commemoration at Tower One/Tower East.

Members of the Jewish community in New Haven met to remember past and recent crimes — from the Holocaust 70 years ago to the Poway synagogue shooting last week. The gathering, organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, featured speakers from Mayor Toni Harp to Holocaust survivor Isidor Juda.

Keynoter Engel is the first third-generation survivor to speak at the Yom HaShoah Commemoration. She is the granddaughter of Selma Wynberg Engel and Chaim Engel, two survivors who participated in the Sobibór Uprising, the largest revolt in a Nazi concentration camp. The two met in the death camp when they were forced to dance together for the amusement of the Nazi guards and went on to testify against the war criminals of Sobibór after the end of World War II. (Selma Wynberg Engel’s obituary was recently published in The New York Times).

In her speech, Engel stressed the necessity of standing up to all forms of injustice from anti-Semitism to anti-immigrant sentiment. She began her talk by bringing attention to the Native American genocide and reminding audience members that they were gathered on land that had been stolen from the Quinnipiac people.

After her grandmother’s death in December 2018, Engel said, she felt a renewed sense of responsibility to memorialize their story.

“I have realized that it is my turn to stand up and speak,” she said.

She went on to describe her grandparents’ experience in Sobibór and their role in the uprising. On Oct. 14, 1943, a group of prisoners, including her grandfather Chaim Engel, killed several Nazi guards before making their escape. Along with 300 prisoners, the Engels made a rush for the death camp fences, leaping barbed wire and dodging gunfire on their way to nearby woods.

The couple eventually found shelter with a Polish family, who housed them in a hayloft in return for jewelry that the Engels had taken from Sobibór. Selma and Chaim were two of only 50 Jews who evaded capture until the end of the war.

Engel drew parallels between Holocaust survivors and asylum seekers in the southern United States, Palestinians in Gaza, and African Americans suffering from police violence. She also touched on the upsurge of anti-Semitism in the United States and abroad.

“Our liberation as Jews is directly tied to the liberation of other people,” she concluded.

After Engel’s speech, Rabbi Alvin Wainhaus sang the ​“Partisan Song,” a Yiddish anthem written in the Vilna Ghetto that symbolizes the strength and resistance of Holocaust survivors.

The song begins: ​“You must not say that you now walk the final way.” It ends: ​“Our courage and our faith will rise and stand.”