Judy Meisel received a standing ovation before she even stepped up to the podium.

As more than 200 people rose to their feet to welcome Meisel, a Holocaust survivor and civil rights advocate, she welcomed the crowd telling all those in attendance, "you are my greatest teachers."

Meisel worked as a slave laborer in a boot factory in a Lithuanian ghetto, watched her mother forced into a gas chamber and posed as a Catholic to hide from the Nazis before she fled to safety in Denmark. She was 16 years old and weighed 47 pounds.

Speaking last night in the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center Worship Hall, Meisel told the crowd of her eyewitness account of the Holocaust and how those experiences helped her to become a civil rights activist.

"At first, I didn't even talk to my children about what I went through; I just didn't want to burden them," she said.

It was when she saw the racism of an all-white area in Philadelphia targeted toward a black family new to the neighborhood that she decided to speak out. She got involved in the Panel of American Women, speaking to the community on what it was like living as a minority in America.

Meisel said her priority now is to educate today's youth on the dangers of hatred and anti-Semitism.

"I am Jewish and I hold my head up high," she said. "You have to be able to say, 'this is who I am.' "

After her 1999 documentary, Tak for Alt: Survival of a Human Spirit, Meisel has been traveling to universities all over the country spreading her message: one person can do a great deal.

"I know when I am not here anymore, you have heard me speak and you can carry on my message," Meisel said. I depend on you to see to it that something like this will never happen again."

David Meckley, development and student leadership director for Penn State Hillel, said it was important to have someone like Meisel speak, especially to college students.

"She has been reaching out to the college community because this is an age where people are shaping the future of their lives," he said. "She wants people to realize that they have to take action and that every individual can do good. This is a great age to reach out to these people."

Davin Carr-Chellman, Center for Ethics and Religious Affairs assistant director, said hearing Meisel speak was a great opportunity for all students.

"I think it's particularly important, on the one hand, for people to encounter her because survivors of the Holocaust are becoming rarer and rarer," he said.

Meckley said Meisel was also a symbol of tolerance and the fight against racism.

"She decided to use the negative experiences she had, and rather than become full of hatred or anger, she used those experiences as motivation to do so much good," he said.

Many of the students in attendance said they walked out of the speech feeling lucky to have heard Meisel speak.

"If you missed it, you really missed something great," Kristin Baker (sophomore-nursing) said. "It's really great what she is doing -- maybe she can really help prevent something like this from ever happening again."

Jodi Goldin (junior-journalism) said Meisel's speech was uplifting.

"I am always interested in hearing stories from people who survived the Holocaust because soon we will not have the chance to talk to people who went through it," Goldin said. "[Meisel] was so great, her spirit was so sweet."