Holocaust survivor, 91, celebrates her bat mitzvah in Buenos Aires

Eugenia Unger, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor, celebrates her bat mitzvah at the Herzliya Jewish community center and temple in Buenos Aires, 79 years late.

Unger was born in Warsaw, Poland, on March 30, 1926. She tells the Argentinean radio program Radio Cultura that “the culmination of my whole life is my bat mitzvah; it is a ritual that is very important in Jewish life.”

Holocaust survivor Eugenia Unger, 91, of Buenos Aires, finally celebrates her bat mitzvah. (Facebook screenshot via JTA)

Unger lived in the Warsaw Ghetto as a teen and was later taken to the Majdanek and Auschwitz Nazi camps with her family, including her parents, two brothers and a sister. Unger is the only member of her family who survived the Holocaust. When she was liberated by Soviet forces, she weighed slightly more than 59 pounds.

After a journey across Central Europe, she lived for two years in a refugee camp in Modena, Italy, where she met David Unger. Both immigrated to Argentina in 1949.

— JTA