About this item
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 Reich Marks (about $200) apiece for the Nazis to take them as slave labor. 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.
About the Author
Star Crossed: A True Romeo and Juliet Story in Hitler's Paris (Jan. 2023) - Can't wait for you to meet Annette Zelman whose pursuit of art, culture, and jazz has become part of her defiance against the Nazi occupation of Paris. So has forbidden her romance. When our talented and spirited Jewish teenager falls in love with the dashing Catholic poet, Jean Jausion, they find acceptance only at the famed Café de Flore, whose habitues include: Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, Django Reinhardt, and other luminaries of the Latin Quarter's creative world. Their parents are against the match and so are the Nazis. 999 - The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz brings together stories of girls on the first transport along with historic research that will astound new fans and former fans of Rena's Promise. 999 places the young women of the first transport front and center in Holocaust history and women's history, and I am hugely excited about the reception it is already having - you will meet Edith, who is very much like, Rena (vivacious, generous and compassionate) . You can find more on our Facebook Page: Or subscribe to the 999 newsletter by visiting: Sadly, Edith passed away two weeks after her 96th birthday this year (2020) . A short memorial is on Youtube: You can also find my Vlog on the Rena's Promise YouTube Channel and follow some of my journeys to Auschwitz, Slovakia and Tylicz, Poland. That channel started as a desire to fight Holocaust denial by promoting truth and helped spur the rebirth of Rena's Promise: The Story of Sisters in Auschwitz and made the digital edition an Amazon BEST-SELLING Holocaust Memoir for 6 months in 2012. Since then a new edition of Rena's Promise has been released, as well as an audio book. RP has been translated into Japanese, Turkish, Portuguese, Dutch, German and published in the UK and commonwealth. The website for RenasPromise. com offers teachers free curriculum on innovative ways to teach the Holocaust and provides a map called the Promise Project that shows where girls from the first transport lived and the towns they were deported from. My novel, The Weeping Buddha, was released by Akashic Books in 2003. I really want to write fiction, but even this murder mystery is based in part on my attempt to deal with an unsolved mystery in my life. It was a finalist in the Nero Wolf Awards and Best Mystery, Lambda Awards (2004) .While NPR doesn't seem to do commentaries anymore, you can find some of my quirky essays in the archives of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Additionally, I have been published in The New York Times, National Geographic, Newsweek, Marie Claire, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, YOU Magazine (Sunday Supplement to Mail on Sunday) , The Advocate and Racing Home: Short Stories By Award-Winning North Carolina Writers.
