Film Screening: 999: The Forgotten Girls

Join the Cohen Institute and The Colonial Performing Arts Center for a special screening of 999: The Forgotten Girls , a documentary that focuses on the first women deported to Auschwitz. The film will be followed by a Q&A with Dr. Dana Smith, Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College. Work by students in Dr. Smith's “Women and the Holocaust” class will also provide context on the film.

About the Film: Edith Grosman was seventeen when Slovak officials ordered unmarried Jewish girls to register for work service. Filled with a sense of national pride, she joined hundreds of other innocent young women who were under the false impression their patriotic duty would benefit their families. Instead, they were deported to Auschwitz as expendable slave labor. The Slovak government paid the Nazis the equivalent of $3,000 to deport each girl. Through first-person testimony and rare archival material, we learn the little-known facts of the women’s camp in 1942 and how a handful of the girls managed against all odds to survive over three long years of hell on earth.

This event is free and open to the public but advanced registration is required as seating is limited at the screening. Registration is available here.

This event is part of the 2025-2026 series on "Gender and Genocide" being offered by the Cohen Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College. Speakers in this series represent a wide range of scholarly research and views; our guests' perspectives should not be taken as representative of the Cohen Institute or Keene State College as a whole. The film showing is made possible through donor funding. If you would like to make a gift to support this lecture or other Institute offerings, please visit our website.

This event is part of the Cohen Center calendar.