Close to 400 people gathered at Chabad UF to listen to a Holocaust survivor speak about endurance and faith Wednesday evening.
During the event, Sora Vigorito, 84, shared her story as one of the youngest known twins who underwent medical experiments performed by Dr. Josef Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death, in Auschwitz Birkenau. Vigorito was one of the 89 pairs of identical twins who underwent these experiments during the Holocaust.
“We can pass these stories on,” said Jacqueline Lowenthal, a 19-year-old UF business administration freshman. She said the event served as a reminder to embrace her faith.
“It’s so important for people to be proud to be Jewish,” she said.
The service started with a Hebrew prayer for the Holocaust victims, led by UF Chabad co-director Rabbi Aharon Notik.
The prayer was followed by a musical performance from Gainesville violinist Mayra Kucera, accompanied by former UF jazz studies adjunct professor Zac Chester on the piano.
Six people came forward during the musical performance to light memorial candles in memory of the over 6 million Jews that were killed during the Holocaust. The lighting was accompanied by the song “Ani Maamin,” a hymn expressing faith in the coming Messiah, which millions of Jews sang as they faced death in the concentration camps.
Before Vigorito shared her story, Kucera and Chester played music from the 1993 film Steven Spielberg film "Schindler’s List."
Vigorito then told the audience about her life, beginning with her birth in 1941 in Berlin, Germany, while her family was still in hiding. Her mother, a refugee from Syria, and her father, born in Siberia, both went to Germany before Hitler came to power in 1933.
Her father was imprisoned in the concentration camp Dachau before she was born. Vigorito said her mother and older sister were arrested, taken to Auschwitz, and never seen again.
About a year after her mother’s arrest, Vigorito and her twin sister, Hanna, went to live with their grandmother before the Gestapo took the family to Auschwitz in 1944.
There, the twins were separated from their grandmother during selection.
The sisters were taken to the Revere and experimented on by Mengele, where they were subjected to spinal injections, blood draws, bone scrapings and skin removal without anesthetic, leaving scars Vigorito still carries, she said.
“They're gone, they don't hurt anymore,” Vigorito said. “But what takes a long time to heal is the spirit.”
Vigorito stayed with her sister until her death, after a night of injections caused her to convulse and vomit before doctors pulled her away when they were only 4 years old. Afterward, Vigorito described feeling numb, as if she had lost her soul.
After liberation, Vigorito was hospitalized in Auschwitz, where she was reunited with her grandmother and persevered through the trauma she experienced.
Once Vigorito’s father was freed by American forces, she met him for the first time. They moved to West Germany. Four years later, they immigrated to Canada, where they lived for another four years until moving to Syracuse, New York.
Although she struggled for a period with spiritual emptiness, she began practicing the traditions of her faith again after moving to Cleveland, Ohio, where she was surrounded by other Jewish people.
“I felt a deep wholeness. The numbness inside me began to melt,” Vigorito said. “I didn't erase the loss of my sister, but it reminded me that my Neshama, my soul, was still alive."
Audience members stood clapping for Vigorito and were eager to ask questions about her experience. The event ended as it started, in prayer and song, followed by a long line of people waiting to speak, hug and thank her.
Gloria Hunt, a 71-year-old UF alumna and retired teacher in Lake City, Florida, said she saw strength in Vigorito, and she was touched by her story.
“I’m just so appreciative of her being able to come and share,” Hunt said. “It’s just to me, is priceless."
Rabbi Berl Goldman, director of the Chabad UF Jewish Center and a son and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, admired Vigorito’s perseverance despite the trauma and abuse she witnessed and experienced.
“It is crucial for us to see and hear that from darkness is light,” Goldman said. “It is our responsibility to carry that message forward.”
Goldman said it is the community’s job to speak up against hate and to call out the people engaging in it to send the message of “never again.”
Vigrito’s testimony to her faith also brought together and inspired younger UF Jewish students.
Emma Neidenberg, a 19-year-old UF business administration freshman, said she felt astonished at Vigorito's joyful spirit. Neidenberg said when she talked with Vigorito, the older woman emphasized the importance of perseverance.
“It was just crazy how happy and joyful she is,” Neidenberg said, “she's gone through so much.”
Contact Alabama Weninegar at aweninegar@alligator.org. Follow her on X at @AlabamaW40513
