Looking at her, she appears as if she could be your grandmother. Her white hair is slightly coifed and there's a tissue in the front pocket of her black blazer. You wouldn't guess that there is anything extraordinary about Judy Meisel's life story.

Then the lights dim and you hear the story of her escape from Stutthof concentration camp. She escaped in 1945 at the age of 16 weighing only 47 pounds. She was hospitalized for over two years in Denmark following her escape.

"Everyone wanted to live, but it wasn't their luck," she said yesterday to a crowd of about 75 students in Chambers Building.

For years Meisel couldn't tell her story because she was scared of others knowing she was Jewish.

But today she lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., and has speaking engagements all over the country.

"Anything I do, I do in memory of the 1.5 million children who died," she said.

Meisel escaped with her sister and she said they thought they were the only Jews left in the world.

The event showed a clip of the documentary about her life, Tak for Alt -- Danish for "thanks for everything"-- followed by a question and answer session with the survivor herself.

When asked what kept her going, she said it was the strength people possess.

"No one knows how resilient we are as human beings. I cannot tell you how else I survived," Meisel said.

She said she is often asked why they didn't fight back.

"We had nothing to fight back with. What we had was faith and they couldn't take that away.

Our faith was to take one more breath of life," she said.

Even when Catholics tried to convert her, she said she refused.

"Nothing else mattered to us. The most important thing was to survive as a Jew," Meisel said.

When she was in the concentration camp, she said she never questioned God.

"God was not capable of preventing the Holocaust, just as God couldn't prevent 9/11," Meisel said.

She closed her presentation with a plea for the audience.

"Please respect other's differences," Meisel said. "No matter what religion you are, you cannot say 'my religion is better than yours.' "

Meisel's presentation was sponsored by Penn State Hillel, Greater Altoona Jewish Federation and the Jewish Studies department

"I think it is important for students to hear a Holocaust survivor speak. It is becoming a lost generation," said Allie Myers (senior-communication sciences and disorders), who is in charge of Holocaust programming for Hillel.

In the audience were the students of History/Jewish Studies 121 (History of the Holocaust 1933-1945), which normally meets at that time.

"Beginning last year, Hillel and I have been trying to work together more and we hope to do more joint programming in the future," the class's professor Linda Short said.