999
The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz
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4.8 • 16 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A PEN America Literary Award Finalist
A Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee
An Amazon Best of the Year Selection
The untold story of some of WW2’s most hidden figures and the heartbreaking tragedy that unites them all. Readers of Born Survivors and A Train Near Magdeburg will devour the tragic tale of the first 999 women in Auschwitz concentration camp. This is the hauntingly resonant true story that everyone should know.
On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women, many of them teenagers, boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service and left their parents’ homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye. Instead, the young women were sent to Auschwitz. Only a few would survive. Now acclaimed author Heather Dune Macadam reveals their 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.
“Intimate and harrowing. . . . This careful, sympathetic history illuminates an incomprehensible human tragedy.”
—Publishers Weekly
“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
“Staggering . . . profound. [Macadam’s] 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
“Heather Dune Macadam’s 999 reinstates the girls to their rightful place in history.”
—Foreword Reviews
“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
“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.”
—Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, founder and executive director, Remember the Women Institute
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this intimate and harrowing account, historian and novelist Macadam (coauthor, Rena's Promise) reconstructs the lives of dozens of young Jewish women who were on the first convoy to arrive at Auschwitz in March 1942. Collected from villages in eastern Slovakia, the unmarried women were told that they'd be working for the government in occupied Poland for three months. In reality, the Slovakian government had agreed to pay the Nazis 500 reichsmarks (roughly $200) per "contract" laborer. Of those on the train, sisters Edith and Lea Friedmann were nearly exempted, but their paperwork didn't come through in time; Rena Kornreich had escaped Poland for the relative safety of Slovakia and was planning her wedding when she boarded the transport to Auschwitz. Macadam writes that many of the women thought they were going on an adventure; none were prepared to haul dead bodies from crematoriums or tear down buildings with their bare hands. Macadam doesn't shy away from the gruesome details but also notes the women's close-knit bonds and willingness to protect each other when they were sick. She movingly describes how the legacy of trauma has impacted the children and grandchildren of the handful of survivors. This careful, sympathetic history illuminates an incomprehensible human tragedy.
