Gloria Lyon looked like any other woman in her late 70s, except for one thing. On her left forearm was a blurry blue tattoo with the branding A-6374, which referred to her being a slave laborer in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust.

On March 23, Lyon and her husband Karl spoke to a class - Film and the Holocaust - of about 70 students, on this experience after showing a documentary entitled, "When I Was 14: A Survivor Remembers." The documentary was directed by the class instructor, cinema professor Jameson Goldner, and released in 1996.

The class, which illustrates the use of film to document the Holocaust, takes place in the August Coppola Theater in the Fine Arts building, Room 101, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Lyon has visited the class ever since it was offered in spring 1996. She has been sharing her story ever since 1977, and speaks frequently at Bay Area schools.

“I feel it is so important to perpetuate the message of the Holocaust for a time when I am no longer,” Lyon said, as she stood with the help of a cane. “The Holocaust is not just a Jewish story, it is a human story, and people must learn these things can happen at anytime to anyone.”

During World War II, the Nazis deported 437,000 Hungarian Jews to death camps, and Lyon was one of the 20,000 survivors. For seven and a half months, she served as a slave laborer at Auschwitz/ Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944.

The film features Lyon, who now lives in San Francisco, speaking to several high school and middle school audiences about her horrific story of surviving seven concentration camps.

“There was never any rancor or bitterness when Gloria spoke,” Goldner said.

In the film, Lyon's voice becomes shaky only when speaking about her mother, whom she never saw again after leaving Auschwitz.

Goldner and Lyon's husband Karl also filmed an emotional trip back to Europe to places where she had been a prisoner. Also filmed was a tearful reunion with a Swedish family that took her into its home for two years after she was freed in 1945.

Due to a lack of money, Goldner’s 60-minute film took 12 years to make.

“We were trying to roll in enough cash to keep rolling the camera,” Goldner said.

Despite technical difficulties, the film has won many awards, including Best Documentary at the 2001 California Independent Film Festival. It has been screened at film festivals across the country and aired on the Sundance Channel.

Goldner met Lyon and her husband through a mutual friend and said he immediately knew she was a person who should be on film.

“The most important thing to me was the reaction of the students after Gloria spoke,” Goldner said. “She was around the same age as the students when this happened.”

Students shared their reactions toward Lyon and her documentary.

“She is the first person that I have heard speak that was actually in the Holocaust,” said Megan Pereau, a cinema senior. “When I saw her (after the film), I felt such strong emotions.”

“I saw her speak when I was 16-years-old at the Exploratorium and I just never forgot it,” said Catherine Obuhoff, a cinema junior.

Brendon Nemeth, junior, decided to take Goldner’s class in part because he is Jewish and thought it was important to understand the past.

“It was pretty powerful to hear her speak,” Nemeth said. “Even though I knew the history, it was interesting to hear her personal story.”

Amy Ng, a cinema senior, said that she had never given much thought to history and never really cared much about it.

“Seeing her speak has inspired me to find out a little about my own Chinese family and what they have gone through in the past,” Ng said.

Lyon is writing her autobiography and hopes to have it published within the year. Her tentative title is “Mommy, What’s That Number on Your Arm?” which is what her 3-year-old son asked her in reference to her Auschwitz tattoo.

As Lyon invited students to come up and look at her Auschwitz tattoo, she said it was the only thing she owned from the Holocaust, and despite an offer for free laser removal from a physician friend, she chose to keep it.

“My idea is if you have a problem, then you need to share it if you can,” Lyon said. “It can help me heal and inform others, so I decided to keep the tattoo.”