In the spring of 1942, 999 Jewish women between the ages of 16 and 35 were recruited in Slovakia and sent to Auschwitz. They were told that they would not be out for more than three months and that they were going to work in newly occupied Poland. For many, it was the first time they left home. Some even got excited at the idea of ​​going to work abroad. Most did not return home. Two thirds of the convoy - for which Germany paid 500 marks to the government of Nazi priest Jozef Tiso - died before the year ended.

The American Heather Dune Macadam tells in The 999 women of Auschwitz (Roca Editorial / Comanegra) the stories she has managed to gather, 75 years later, of those Jewish girls who arrived on the first train to Auschwitz. They were not prisoners of war or resistance fighters, but women in the fullness of their lives.

Why? « If your goal is to destroy a race, the first thing you attack is women of childbearing age . It has been that way since Babylon, women have always been the target of wars and genocides. Moreover, in a patriarchal society it was easier to let your daughters go than your sons. And I am convinced that at the Wannsee Conference it was said that we had to start with women. They were young, teenagers, poorly educated ... they were not important, ”he explains.

"The sensations are difficult to explain," says one of the survivors, Edith, in the book, "because a 17-year-old girl, if she's not a stupid auctioneer, is much more optimistic about the future than an older person. Despite fear and insecurity, optimism was still there. Perhaps that explains why, according to the author, women survived in the countryside more than men. «If you have passed through Auschwitz, the number with which they marked you upon arrival is your identification, which indicates on what date you entered the field. How many male survivors are there with a four-digit number? The answer is that there is hardly any comparison with the number of women. We are tougher, ”he says.

A fact that has several explanations: one is that men who were not sent directly to the gas chambers were assigned very hard physical jobs that quickly diminished their health. Another is the physical complexion of some women: “If you were small, you probably needed to eat little to keep yourself, and also to spend more unnoticed among the thousands of prisoners. The mere fact of being below the gaze of the SS guards meant that you were not perceived as a threat. Although living or dying was a matter of luck: they could kill you for any reason , for being sick, for being healthy or for being beautiful ».

Why 999 and not a thousand? The author assures that it is due to how obsessed the high positions of the Third Reich were with hidden mysticism. Himmler was a fervent astrologer, an astral card enthusiast, Goebbels was fascinated by Nostradamus and the number 9 was "culminating" , very powerful. The proof is that days earlier, Himmler ordered another shipment to Auschwitz of another 999 Ravensbrück prisoners.

The cameras with Zyclon-B began operating in July 1942, so Dune Macadam estimates that the survivors who arrived in March of that year spent two years and nine months in Auschwitz, almost three years, before he was released in January of 1945. «But if you look, the official Holocaust story, the stories that are the flagship of the camp, are of men like Primo Levi, who spent six months there, or Viktor Frankl, who was less. It is a masculine story. The only female story is that of Anne Frank, who did not write about Auschwitz ».

Six weeks ago the book was published in the United States and its international echo has made new clues related to that convoy appear: only in the last two weeks have a 96-year-old survivor from Australia and another of Dune Macadam contacted 94 from New York . «A month ago I counted 60 survivors, but today I would say they are about 80. Women have a harder time telling their story. There are still many stories that we don't know, ”says the author, for whom collecting these voices is more important today than ever for several reasons. «The first is because they are dying. And then there is the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the polarization of races and religions in society, ”he slips. «War is of no use to anyone. Hating yourself is wrong, but killing yourself for it? If we want peace, we need more women leaders, ”he concludes.

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