Holocaust Survivor, 91, Celebrates Her Bat Mitzvah In Buenos Aires
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Eugenia Unger, who usually displays the number tattooed on her arm by the Nazis, covered it with her Shabbat clothes and her talit when she celebrated her bat mitzvah, 79 years late.
Unger, 91, born as Eugenia Rotsztejn in Warsaw, Poland, on March 30, 1926, was identified by the Nazis during the World War II as number 48914. Now she often talks about her experiences and shows the number on her arm to students due to her involvement with the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum. She also attends school conferences to talk about the Holocaust.
Unger was called to the Torah as a bat mitzvah on Saturday at the Herzliya Jewish community center and temple in Buenos Aires.
She told the Argentinean radio program, Radio Cultura on Thursday of her upcoming celebration that “the culmination of my whole life is my bat mitzvah; it is a ritual that is very important in Jewish life,”
The temple also organized a birthday celebration for Unger on Friday night.
Unger lived in the Warsaw Ghetto and weighed slightly more than 59 pounds when she was rescued from Auschwitz.
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