A life of dignity and pride

Holocaust survivor Yvonne Engelman has been remembered for her “incredibly positive attitude to life” following her passing at the age of 98.

Engelman was a founding member of the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM) and was a much-loved volunteer guide. She made an extraordinary connection with the thousands of students she spoke to over her years, telling them her account of promising her father that she would survive.

“My father said to me, ‘I don’t know where we are going, but I’m sure it’s not a holiday. You have to promise me one thing: that you will survive.’ I said, ‘Of course I will survive.’”

Engelman was born in 1927 in Dovhe, Czechoslovakia and was an only child and only grandchild. In 1944 she and her family were taken to the Beregszasz ghetto and later to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Aged just 15, Engelman narrowly escaped death when a gas chamber she was sent to malfunctioned.

She was the only member of her family to survive.