Heather Dune Macadam, author of the 2020 book 999, is completing a film with the same title.
As the subtitle of the book explains, this is the story of “The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz.”
Both the film and the book 999 reveal the mostly unknown story of about 999 unmarried, young Jewish women in Slovakia who registered for government service in a supposed shoe factory and ended up in Auschwitz. Their government had paid the Nazis to take them and work them to death.
The film answers these and other questions: Who were these young women? Why were they chosen? How did a handful survive over three years in the death camps?
94-year-old Edith Grosman—#1970—and other survivors reveal the truth of this almost completely ignored piece of women’s history, the first official Jewish transport to Auschwitz. The January 2020 book was published by Citadel Press in the United States, as well as in 13 countries worldwide. This film will complement the book to educate and inform a wider public about this nearly forgotten story and integrate it into Holocaust history.
As Rochelle G. Saidel, founding director of Remember the Women Institute, wrote for the book’s back jacket: “This is 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.”
The film is in the final stages of post-production at the end of 2021 and is raising funds to finish the film. Donations are tax deductible through the Rena’s Promise Foundation.