The Nine Hundred

'Books such as this are essential: they remind modern readers of events that should never be forgotten' - Caroline Moorehead

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 Reichsmarks (about 160) apiece for the Nazis to take them as slave labour. 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.

“An important addition to Holocaust literature and women's history.”

- Daily Express

Heather Dune Macadam's first book, co-authored with Rena Kornreich Gelissen, was Rena's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz, also about the first transport. Heather Dune actively fights against Holocaust denial and is the director of the Rena's Promise Foundation. She 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 efforts have been recognized by Yad Vashem in the UK, the USC Shoah Foundation, the National Museum of Jewish History in Bratislava, Slovakia, and the Panstowe Memorial and Museum of Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, NPR, the New York Times and the Guardian. She divides her time between New York and Herefordshire, England. Visit 999thefirstwomeninauschwitz on Facebook, on Twitter @heatherdune, or at

'Books such as this are essential: they remind modern readers of events that should never be forgotten' - Caroline Moorehead 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 Reichsmarks (about 160) apiece for the Nazis to take them as slave labour. 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.

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