Selma Engel

Holocaust survivor BORN MAY 15, 1922 - DIED DECEMBER 4, 2018, AGED 96

BORN Saartje Wijnberg in the Netherlands, Selma was 20 when she was sent to Sobibor extermination camp in Poland in April 1943 and made to sort clothes of gassing victims.

She was among 58 prisoners who escaped following an uprising and hid out in a barn with future husband Chaim Engel for nine months.

The Nazis liquidated the camp but Wijnberg told a Russian reporter about the horrors inflicted on her people and her account was published in September 1944.

She went on to testify at the trials of German soldiers after the war. Wijnberg became a jeweller and was knighted by the Dutch government in 2010.

She is survived by a son and daughter, four granddaughters and eight great-grandchildren.