NAZI VICTIM SET TO SPEAK; CAMP SURVIVOR TO RELIVE ORDEAL.

Byline: Sharon Cotal Staff Writer

Edith Singer was just a young girl in May 1944 when her family was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. She still remembers the first Nazi officer she saw when she arrived.

``There was one officer who stood out from everyone else,'' Singer said. ``He had on white gloves, and he was holding a little stick, and my first thought was, what a handsome man. I was just a 16-year-old girl, and I didn't realize what was happening.''

That handsome officer was Dr. Josef Mengele.

Singer, who now lives in Los Angeles, will speak at 1 p.m. today at College of the Canyons about her experiences in two concentration camps during World War II. The discussion will be in the college's small auditorium, classroom M-318, and the public is welcome.

When the teen-age Singer first saw Mengele, he already had a reputation for cruelty and brutality at Auschwitz. But he was known to use his movie-star looks and charming manner to disarm his victims. He would act in a caring, concerned manner when greeting the exhausted women and children who had just arrived, only to send them to the gas chambers a moment later, Singer said.

``Women and children would walk toward him, and he would point his little stick to the left or the right,'' Singer said. ``If he pointed to the left, you went straight to the gas chamber. If he pointed to the right, you had a chance to survive. At first he wasn't sure about me, because I was so small. But he felt my abdomen and decided I was old enough to work, so I was sent to the right with my mother and sister.''

Singer was separated from her mother and sister for the rest of her internment, but all survived. Her father and brother, who also were sent to Auschwitz, did not survive. Singer was liberated on May 8, 1945, from another camp where she had been sent on a death march.

``The day I was liberated was one of the happiest days of my life,'' Singer said. ``I made the decision that day never to talk about what happened and to just put it behind me.''

She went to a camp in Germany for people displaced in the war and finished high school. She got married and had two children, never speaking of the horrors she saw in the camps. Then she moved to the United States and became a teacher.

``One of my students, a little boy 8 years old, came up to me and asked me about the number on my arm. At first I was angry, because I thought everyone should know about it, but then I realized he's only 8, and how could he know?'' Singer said.

So she started talking about what happened to her - first to her students, and then to small groups in the area. For more than 35 years, Singer has volunteered her time to speak in educational settings and at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. She is also the author of ``March to Freedom: A Memoir of the Holocaust.''

``I speak to teach the new generation what people are capable of, so that whenever any kind of prejudice appears, they will fight against it,'' Singer said.

English instructor Adam Kempler of College of the Canyons arranged for Singer to speak on campus. He feels it is a unique opportunity for students to hear a first-hand account of what happened during the Holocaust.

``Singer just barely made the selections - most of the people who were younger than her did not survive,'' Kempler said. ``That means most survivors are getting to an age where they won't be able to share their stories much longer.

``Most of my students are not really aware of what happened during the Holocaust, and what it meant to the people who survived. I think it's important that they hear her story, so that something like this will never happen again.''

Anyone interested in attending is asked to call Kempler at [phone] Ext. 3266.