Geo-blocked to the Greater Philadelphia Region

Directed by Heather Dune Macadam
Documentary Feature | USA | 2023 | 90 min | English

PHILADELPHIA PREMIERE
Best-selling author and historian Heather Dune Macadam has adapted her acclaimed book, 999, into a powerful documentary that sheds light on a wrenching true story. In March 1942, nearly 1,000 young Slovak Jewish women, mostly teenagers, told by their government that they were embarking on a volunteer work assignment, were instead illegally deported to Auschwitz on what was the first Jewish transport to the Nazi death camp. Rather than strictly focus on the suffering and death experienced by most of the girls, Macadam tells stories of a small group who survived against all odds, even under unimaginable conditions that lasted more than three grueling years.

Director’s Bio

Heather Dune Macadam has spent over 20 years researching and interviewing families, witnesses, and survivors of the first official transport to Auschwitz. Her internationally acclaimed book, 999 (published in 2020), has been translated into 18 languages and was a Pen Finalist in 2021. Macadam’s first book, Rena’s Promise, co-written with Holocaust survivor #1716 Rena Kornreich Gelissen, is required reading in history classes around the world. In 2011, she founded Rena’s Promise Foundation in the hopes of helping to create a more ecumenical world unhindered by prejudice, racism, or hatred. Macadam’s work discovering lost girls and young women of the Holocaust has been recognized by Yad Vashem in the UK, the National Museum of Jewish History in Slovakia, and the Memorial Museum of Auschwitz in Poland. A former professor, she has taught journalism and creative nonfiction for over 20 years. 999: THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS is her directorial debut.

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