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The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz
by Heather Dune Macadam
On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Filled with a sense of adventure and national pride, they left their parents' homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye.
Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women—many of them teenagers—were sent to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reich Marks (about $200) apiece for the Nazis to take them as slave labor. Of those 999 innocent deportees, only a few would survive.
The facts of the first official Jewish transport to Auschwitz are little known, yet profoundly relevant today. These were not resistance fighters or prisoners of war. There were no men among them. Sent to almost certain death, the young women were powerless and insignificant not only because they were Jewish—but also because they were female. Now acclaimed author Heather Dune Macadam reveals their poignant stories, drawing on extensive interviews with survivors, and consulting with historians, witnesses, and relatives of those first deportees to create an important addition to Holocaust literature and women's history.
"[I]ntimate and harrowing...This careful, sympathetic history illuminates an incomprehensible human tragedy." - Publishers Weekly
"An uplifting story of the herculean strength of young girls in a staggeringly harrowing situation." - Kirkus Reviews
"Against the backdrop of World War II, this respectful narrative presents a compassionate and meticulous remembrance of the young women profiled throughout. Recommended for all collections." - Library Journal
"A staggering narrative about the forgotten women of the Holocaust. In a profound work of scholarship, Heather Dune Macadam reveals how young women helped each other survive one of the most egregious events in human history. Her book also offers insight into the passage of these women into adulthood, and their children, as 'secondhand survivors.'" - Gail Sheehy, New York Times bestselling author of Passages and Daring: My Passages
"An important addition to the annals of the Holocaust, as well as women's history. Not everyone could handle such material, but Heather Dune Macadam is deeply qualified, insightful and perceptive." - Susan Lacy, creator of the American Masters series and filmmaker
"However much one reads about the Holocaust there is always something more with the power to shock. The story of these teenage girls is truly extraordinary. Congratulations to Heather Dune Macadam for enabling the rest of us to sit down and just marvel at how on earth they did it." - Anne Sebba, New York Times bestselling author of Les Parisiennes and That Woman
"An important contribution to the literature on women's experiences...With passion and extensive research, Heather Dune Macadam gives the first official women's transport to Auschwitz its rightful place in Holocaust history." - Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, founder and executive director, Remember the Women Institute
This information about 999 was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Heather Dune Macadam's first book, co-authored with Rena Kornreich Gelissen, was Rena's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz. Rena's Promise has been published throughout the world. Director of the Rena's Promise Foundation, Macadam also sits on the advisory board of the Cities of Peace Auschwitz and is the producer/director of the documentary film 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz. Her work has been recognized by Yad Vashem in the U.K., the USC Shoah Foundation, the National Museum of Jewish History in Bratislava, Slovakia, and the Memorial Museum of Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland. Her writing has been featured in National Geographic, the New York Times, the Guardian, on NPR, and in other major media outlets. She divides her time between New York and Herefordshire, England.
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