Lena Casuto Goren was born in Salonika, Greece in 1930. Her family moved to Larissa when her father became the Chief Rabbi of that city. When she was nine years old, Italy and Greece entered World War II. Luftwaffe planes began dropping bombs on the city, and the mayor of Larissa warned Rabbi Casuto of the imminent deportation of Larissa’s Jews to German concentration camps. 

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Lena’s family, with eighty-three others, fled to the mountains of Tzouma in the dead of night. Her father carried a small Torah scroll from their synagogue to protect them. They hid in an isolated monastery with no running water or facilities for the rest of the war, suffering from food shortages, illness, and confinement. Tragically, she learned at the end of the war that the entire rest of her family - cousins, grandparents, uncles, aunts - died in concentration camps.

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At the age of seventeen, Lena immigrated to the United States with her family. She married, raised three children, and, despite having only a third-grade education, earned a high school diploma. Lena worked as a seamstress, hairdresser, and a Greek and Spanish interpreter for the court system. She is a former Miss Senior America finalist and the current co-leader of The Melodians, an all-senior chorus that performs at venues across Queens, New York.