2023 HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD

999: THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS OF THE HOLOCAUST

TUES, 12/5, 8:00pm, 99 min BAY STREET THEATER

Director Heather Dune Macadam in attendance for Q/A

Director: Heather Dune Macadam
Producers: Heather Dune Macadam, Jane Schonberger, Beatriz M Calleja, Jay Heit, Stephen Hopkins, David Kaufman
Editor: Beatriz M Calleja
Cinematographer: Stephen Hopkins

The first official Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz were all young women, but for 80 years their story was overlooked by historians. In the spring of 1942, the Nazis ordered the Slovak government to send a slave labor force and received 999 teenage, Jewish girls. Their government paid the Nazis 500RM, the equivalent of $4,000 per girl today. Their railway ticket was a one-way trip to Auschwitz. The bonds between these women were unbreakable. It kept them alive. This untold story is important both to Holocaust history and to women’s history.

Award-winning author of 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Transport to Auschwitz, Heather Dune Macadam is the foremost U.S. scholar on the first Jewish Transport to Auschwitz. Her critically acclaimed book was a Pen Award Finalist for Biography. This documentary is based on that book, and the result of eleven years of research and interviews, which she filmed.

Film is sponsored by Leslie & Andrew Siben