Nine Hundred

A remarkable story of courage in the face of injustice and brutality in the Second World War Books such as this are essential: they remind modern readers of events that should never be forgotten'' - Caroline Moorehead 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. That is not what happened. The young women - many of them teenagers - were sent on their way to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reichsmarks (about £160) apiece for the Nazis to take them as cheap, forced labour. Of those 999 innocent deportees, only a few would survive. The facts of the first official Jewish transport to Auschwitz are little known, yet