Bratislava Working Group

Intelligence gathering

Carpathian Ruthenian Jews arrive at Auschwitz in 1944.

The Working Group tracked the destination of the deportation trains, learning that young women were deported to Auschwitz and young men to various sites in the Lublin district, where they were forced to work on construction projects. Deportees brought chalk, which they used to write the destination on the railway carriages, returned empty to Slovakia.^[65][69] A few even managed to send postcards along the route with disguised references to their location and the terrible conditions on Holocaust trains.^[69] Although the Slovak railway company turned the trains over to the Deutsche Reichsbahn at the border, one Slovak railway worker accompanied the train to ensure that the equipment would be returned intact.^[70] The Working Group interviewed these railway workers and was able to obtain the destination from them. However, little was known about the sites to which the Jews were being taken and no knowledge about extermination facilities was available.^[65][69]

Polish-speaking couriers, mostly from villages along the Polish-Slovak border, were employed to illegally cross the border and establish contact with the deportees. According to Weissmandl, contact was established with some of them by late April or early May.^[71][72] Through the couriers, the Working Group was able to obtain reasonably accurate information on the horrible conditions in which deportees were held, in addition to the vague allusions in the censored messages that the Germans allowed them to send.^[72] These letters were forwarded to the ÚŽ by their recipients in Slovakia. Additional reports reached the Bratislava activists from Jews in the countryside who possessed special permits, without which Jews were not allowed to travel.^[73] The Working Group also used its couriers to track deportees from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Austria, and Belgium, and to keep itself appraised of the situation of Jews at Theresienstadt and in the Czech lands.^[74]

By the end of the summer, the only locations that the Working Group had not established contact with were Birkenau and Majdanek. Accurate information on these camps was not available because anyone caught within eight kilometers would be summarily executed, so as late as September 1943, despite reports of an extermination camp at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek were still described as heavily guarded forced labor camps.^[75] In August, many Slovak Jewish deportees were transported a second time, to extermination camps; many Jews were murdered in the roundups. News of this reached the Working Group by the end of the month, and in October, the couriers reported that Slovak Jewish deportees had been sent to "the other side of the Bug"—in fact, Bełżec extermination camp—where there were reportedly facilities for mass murder using poison gas. They also informed the Working Group of the Grossaktion Warsaw, in which most of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto had been deported during the summer of 1942. Although the Working Group passed on these reports to its Swiss contacts in December, it downplayed them in the letter and sent the couriers back to confirm the reports, indicating that the activists doubted the accuracy of the information. In this respect, their knowledge of the Final Solution was less complete than that in the Western world at the same time.^[76]

Over the winter of 1942–43 the mass murder of Jews in Lublin and winter weather hampered the work of the couriers. In February 1943, however, the Bratislava activists received information that other Slovak Jews deported from the Lublin area had also been sent to Bełżec, and corroborated the reports that there were extermination facilities there. From then on, the Working Group knew that those deported for a second time had been murdered.^[77] Later that spring, the couriers told the Working Group that some 10,000 Slovak Jews were still alive at the Bochnia and Stanisławów Ghettos. The Stanisławów Ghetto was liquidated before any help could arrive, but the couriers urged the Jews in Bochnia to escape and provided information on routes.^[78] In 1943, Working Group activists still believed, erroneously, that most able-bodied Jews were allowed to remain alive.^[75]

Evasion and escape

Jews awaiting execution at Bełżec in 1942

Slovak officials promised that deportees would not be mistreated and that they would be allowed to return home after a fixed period.^[79] Initially, even most youth movement activists believed that it was better to report rather than to risk reprisal against their families.^[80] This was accompanied by a campaign of intimidation, violence, and terror by the Hlinka Guard, which carried out many of the roundups.^[81] In May and June, the first reports of deportees trickled in, mentioning starvation, arbitrary killings, the forcible separation of families, and poor living conditions.^[82] Neumann sent members of banned Zionist youth movements by train with these reports to warn Jews to hide or flee, a task made more difficult by strict censorship and travel restrictions.^[66][41][83] By June, accumulating evidence of Nazi perfidy caused many Jews not to appear for deportation or passively wait at home to be rounded up. Many tried to obtain false papers, fradulent conversion certificates, or other exemptions.^[84][85] Several thousand^{[lower-alpha 6]} Jews fled to Hungary in the spring of 1942, aided by Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar and the youth movements.^[30] Many others were arrested at the border and immediately deported.^[66] Widespread resistance necessitated that the Hlinka Guard forcibly round up Jews to fill transports and to deport Jews in labor camps who had been promised immunity.^[54][67]

According to historian Yehoshua Büchler, the Working Group's most important source of information on the fate of deported Jews was the reports of escapees.^[89] Majdanek, where young Slovak Jewish men were sent, had an active escape committee from April. Dozens of escape attempts were made, of which the most significant was that of Dionýz Lénard, who returned to Slovakia in July 1942 and reported on the high death rate and hunger for Jews in Lublin, but not on the Final Solution.^[90][91] Other Slovak Jews managed to escape from ghettos in the Lublin area, including Opole Lubelskie, Łuków, and Lubartów.^[89][92] Another escapee from Krychów forced labor camp submitted a report to the Working Group which was forwarded to Istanbul.^[92] In the early summer of 1943, three fugitives brought more information on extermination camps. David Milgrom, a Polish Jew from Łódź, had escaped from Treblinka in late 1942 and lived as a gentile in Poland before being smuggled into Slovakia by Working Group couriers. Milgrom, an unknown Slovak Jewish escapee from Sobibór, and another person who had spoken with an escapee of Bełżec made reports to the Working Group; their testimony was relayed to Jewish groups in Switzerland.^[93] These reports finally convinced the Working Group activists of the German plan of total extermination of all Jews.^[75]

In 1943, the Working Group also mobilized to aid escapees from Poland, both Polish and Slovak Jews. A Slovak Jewish taxi driver named Schwartz, based in Prešov, near the Polish border, helped smuggle Polish Jewish refugees over the Carpathian Mountains to Hungary but charged large fees for his help and used harsh measures on those unable to pay. The Working Group enlisted him and other similar individuals in setting up smuggling operations in Prešov and other border towns including Kežmarok, Žilina, and Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš; Fleischmann justified this collaboration on the basis that Jews could not be saved any other way.^[94] The Zionist youth movements set up a cottage industry for forging false papers; priority was given to Polish Jews, who were more vulnerable to deportation.^[94][83][95] According to the Aid and Rescue Committee, between 1,900 and 2,500 adults and 114 children reached Hungary by late November 1943. The failure of the German war on the Eastern Front had altered public opinion in Slovakia against the fascist government, improving the odds of clandestine operations, but they were still very dangerous.^[94]

Efforts to inform the world

Information on the progress of the Holocaust was transmitted to all of the Working Group's contacts, including the Aid and Rescue Committee and Orthodox rabbi Pinchas Freudiger in Budapest and Jewish groups in Switzerland.^[96][84] The Working Group used diplomatic parcels, undercover messengers, and codes based on Hebrew and Yiddish words to bypass German censorship; Wisliceny's codename was "Willy".^[97][98] Most of the correspondence was intercepted by the Abwehr in Vienna, the letters were sent back to Bratislava, where German police attaché Franz Golz gave them to Wisliceny, as the latter had authority of Jewish issues.^[98] Slovak historian Katarína Hradská has suggested that the content of the Riegner Telegram, an August 1942 report on the Holocaust, was derived in part from the Working Group's information, particularly Lenard's report.^[99]

In late July 1942, the Working Group received a report of a massacre of Jews in Poland; as with other reports of atrocities, it forwarded the information to the Slovak government. In response, church officials and cabinet members applied pressure to the government, and Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka made a request to Wisliceny that a delegation of Slovak priests be allowed into the General Government in order to disprove the report.^[100][101] Wisliceny had to travel to Berlin to notify Eichmann of this request. Instead of priests, the Nazis sent Wisliceny and Friedrich Fiala, the Slovak editor of a fascist newspaper, who subsequently used the visit as fodder for antisemitic propaganda. This incident probably convinced the Germans to relax their pressure on the Slovak government regarding deportations;^{[102][103][104]} a transport scheduled for 7 August was cancelled and deportations would not resume until mid-September.^[105]

In 1943, moderate officials in the government who opposed the deportation were able to use information on the fate of deported Jews to justify their opposition. The Slovak church also took a less favorable attitude towards renewed transports than it had the previous year, which Fatran attributes to the Working Group's news of mass death. To renewed Slovak demands to see the sites where Slovak Jews were imprisoned, Eichmann suggested that they visit Theresienstadt, where Slovak Jews had not been sent. The Slovak representatives could not have been allowed to go to Lublin, because the majority of Slovak Jewish deportees had already been murdered.^[106] The Working Group received the report of Auschwitz escapee Jerzy Tabeau and sent it to the ambassador of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to Switzerland, Jaromír Kopecký, but it is unclear when and how.^[107]

Relief

The Polish-speaking couriers delivered money and valuables and smuggled letters back to Slovakia. A few letters stating that the recipient's life had been extended by the aid received persuaded the Working Group to intensify its efforts in the face of increasing evidence that the deportees were being systematically murdered.^{[71][108][109]} The initiatives to aid deportees was a key priority both for the Working Group and the families and communities of the deportees.^[110] Through the couriers, the Working Group was able to obtain reasonably accurate information on the horrible conditions in which deportees were held, in addition to the vague allusions in the censored messages that the Germans allowed them to send. Coordinating its efforts with the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Jewish Self-Help Organization in Kraków, and relatives of deportees, the Working Group attempted to track down exact addresses to legally send aid parcels to the deportees. In a letter to Abraham Silberschein, a representative of the WJC, in July 1942, Fleischmann reported that the Working Group had obtained only 2,200 addresses for the tens of thousands of deported Jews.^[111][112]

Zionist youth movement activists used the information to track down deported activists and send aid to them.^[89] Attempts to send money via the Slovak National Bank failed when the receipients were not found, forcing the Working Group to rely even more on the couriers, who were also charged with finding and aiding escapees. In May 1943, pressure from the Working Group caused the Slovak government to allow them to send packages of used clothing to known addresses in the Protectorate, the Reich, and the General Government. Fleischmann, who was in charge of the ÚŽ welfare department at the time, oversaw this operation. The only confirmed deliveries were to Theresienstadt.^[113] Through couriers, the Working Group maintained contact with a group of able-bodied Jews used for forced labor on Luftwaffe airfields near Dęblin until 23 July 1944, when the camp was liquidated. This was the last substantial surviving group of Slovak Jews in the Lublin district.^[114]

On 27 August 1942, Fleischmann sent a letter to Nathan Schwalb, Hehalutz representative in Switzerland, in which she expressed doubt that the deported Jews would ever be seen alive again. Fleischmann stated that the cash-strapped local community had already spent 300,000 Sk on relief efforts, and asked for a monthly budged for relief efforts from Schwalb. Frieder and Weissmandl, who were intensively involved in the illegal relief efforts, were arrested on 22 September, but were not deterred form continuing their work upon their release. In November, the Working Group received 20,000 Swiss francs from the JDC via a courier, their first support from international Jewish organizations. Later, the JDC deposited this sum monthly in an account at the Union Bank of Switzerland earmarked for the Working Group relief and bribery operations, although it usually failed to meet the needs; Fleischmann frequently had to remind the Jewish organizations in Switzerland to honor their promises to her. The money was transferred to Bratislava via Hungary, delaying its availability.^[115]

Bribery of Slovak officials

Jews performing forced labor in the Lublin district in 1940

Negotiations to save Slovak Jews via bribery began at Weissmandl's initiative in mid-June.^[116][117] The Working Group immediately approached the Slovak officials responsible for Jewish affairs,^[117] who had already proved themselves to be highly corrupt when they accepted bribes for preferential treatment during the liquidation of Jewish businesses.^[17] Initially, officials were bribed to add more names to the list of Jews deemed essential to the economy and thus exempt from deportation.^[118]

The most influential official to be successfully bribed was Anton Vašek, head of the department within the Ministry of the Interior that was responsible for implementing the deportations.^[27][39] He began to accept bribes in late June, but continued to organize transports^[63][119] and stated in public that the "Jewish question must be solved 100%".^[120] Due to his "high-handedness" in exercising powers over life and death, Vašek became known as "King of the Jews";^[39][119] he was known to pull Jews out of cattle wagons after receiving a bribe, only to send them on the next transport.^[119] According to historians Gila Fatran and Ivan Kamenec, his desire for money to fund his gambling and womanizing habits made him susceptible to bribery.^[39][119] Tibor Kováč, a member of the Working Group who was his former classmate, visited Vašek's office almost every day to deliver the bribes and provide him with excuses to explain the delay to his superiors.^[121] The Working Group promised Vašek 100,000 Slovak koruna (about $1,600) for each month without deportations.^[121][38] Due to Vašek's intervention, a 26 June transport of Jews was cancelled; Vašek presented Interior Minister Alexander Mach with a falsified report that all non-exempt Jews had already been deported. However, Mach did not believe the report and deportations resumed in July.^[117]

Other officials accepted bribes from the Working Group. Augustín Morávek was dismissed in July 1942, coincinding with the slackening of deportations.^[38] Isidor Koso, head of the prime minister's office and the one who had initially proposed the deportation of Jews, received a monthly payment from the Working Group in 1942 and 1943.^[122][123] Afraid of being caught, Koso refused to make personal contact with Fleischmann, who instead managed to make the contact with his wife, Žofia Kosova. In exchange for money to fund her son's private education in Switzerland, Kosova provided the Working Group with updates on the government's plans for the remaining Slovak Jews.^[123] In late October 1943, Kosova was discovered with 5,000 Swiss francs given to her by the Working Group and a letter from Fleischmann to Saly Mayer, the JDC representative in Switzerland, requesting him to give her another 45,000 Swiss francs. Fleischmann and several other ÚŽ employees were arrested. Extremists in the Slovak government attacked those viewed as soft on Jews; Koso was dismissed.^[124][123] Gisi Medricky, the finance minister, and Alois Pecuch, director of labor camps, were also bribed,^[27][125] as were deportation commissioners Ján Bučenek and Karol Zábrecky, the gendarme officers who ran the labor camps, and government officials who had no power over deportations, but could provide the Working Group with useful information. The Working Group also tried to bribe Tiso, but there is no evidence that they were successful.^[125] After the war, Slovak officials denied taking bribes.^[38]

Slovakia Plan

The Working Group's negotiations with Dieter Wisliceny had begun in the summer of 1941, when Shlomo Gross had attempted to arrange emigration. These contacts informed the Slovak Jewish leaders that Wisliceny was susceptible to bribery and that the SS hierarchy was eager to get in touch with the representatives of "International Jewry", whose influence on the policies of the Western Allies was greatly exaggerated in the Nazi imagination.^[126] Gila Fatran suggests that he was desperate for money,^[100] while Israeli historian Livia Rothkirchen emphasizes his craving for recognition; he had previously been passed over for promotion in favor of Eichmann.^[127] However, unlike the Slovak representatives, contact with Wisliceny carried a high risk and had to be done clandestinely. Hochberg, who made regular visits to Wisliceny's office, was employed as an intermediary in the absence of an alternative. The Working Group considered Hochberg a collaborator, feared that associating with him would harm their reputations, and believed him to be unreliable. Nevertheless, Fleischmann and Weissmandl agreed that it was worth making a deal with the devil to rescue Jews. At this point the structure of the Working Group was formalized in order to improve the efficiency and secrecy of operations. Fleischmann was unanimously chosen as the head of the bribery department. Due to the disagreement in involving Hochberg, the negotiations with Wisliceny was not opened until mid-July^[126][128] or early August.^[129]

Majdanek concentration camp, where many able-bodied Slovak Jewish men were imprisoned

Exploiting Wisliceny's desire to contact international Jewish organizations, Weissmandl forged letters from a fictional Swiss official named "Ferdinand Roth". In mid-July, Hochberg brought the letters to Wisliceny. He told the Working Group that Wisliceny had the power to stop the deportations from Slovakia and demanded between $40,000 and $50,000, to be paid in two installments, in exchange for delaying the deportations until the following spring.^{[116][117][130]} The Working Group had not anticipated an affirmative response and began to hope that they could save the remaining Slovak Jews.^[117][128] A Slovak Jewish businessman, Shlomo Stern, donated the first $25,000 in US dollars, which was most likely delivered to Wisliceny on 17 August. The balance of the bribe was due in late September.^{[131][117][132]} It is unclear what happened to this money; it was probably embezzled by Hochberg^{[lower-alpha 7]} or Wisliceny.^[100][129] Deportations were halted from 1 August to 18 September; the Working Group assumed that its ransom operations had borne fruit.^{[129][103][134][lower-alpha 8]}

The meeting between Hochberg and Wisliceny probably occurred after Tuka's request to send a Slovak delegation to the General Government, which convinced the Germans to reduce their pressure for deportation. Wisliceny therefore managed to collect the Jews' money and take credit for the slackening of transports. Simultaneously, he was attempting to persuade the Slovak government to approve the resumption of deportations, sending a memo to Tuka and Mach claiming that only indigent Jews were affected by deportation. Wisliceny recommended raids for Jews in hiding, cancellation of most economic exceptions, and the deportation of converts, who would be settled separately from Jews. If this was done, Wisliceny claimed, twenty-three trains could be filled and Slovakia could be the first country in southeastern Europe to become Judenrein ("cleansed of Jews"). Wisliceny pointed out that Tiso, a member of a different political faction within the Slovak People's Party, had recently given a speech in which he claimed that Slovakia's development could only progress after the deportation of the remaining Jews.^{[102][136][137]} The Working Group was unaware of Wisliceny's advocacy for continued deportations. He pretended to be on the Jews' side and was always reasonable and polite, but claimed to need large sums to bribe his superiors, fooling the desperate members of the Working Group.^[130][138]

Saly Mayer was unable to contribute. The JDC in Switzerland was hamstrung by restrictions in sending currency to Switzerland; it had to employ dubious smugglers to illegally bring funds into Nazi-occupied Europe. Although Mayer was sometimes able to borrow money in Swiss francs against a postwar payment, he was completely unable to send the dollars that Wisliceny demanded.^[139] In August and September, Weissmandl pressed his Orthodox Jewish contacts to provide the remaining $20,000. When another transport left Slovakia on 18 September, Weissmandl cabled Jewish leaders in Budapest and blamed them for the deportation. A second transport departed on 21 September, Yom Kippur; the money, donated by Hungarian Jewish philanthropist Gyula Link, probably arrived the next day,^[140] although other sources state that the Working Group did not hand over the second payment until November.^[141] In October, Wisliceny forwarded $20,000 to the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office with the knowledge of the German ambassador to Slovakia, Hanns Ludin, via police attaché Franz Golz.^[142] On 20 October, the last transport for nearly two years departed with 1,000 physically or mentally disabled Jews.^[100] The Working Group assumed that the bribe had been successful.^[83][143]

Europa Plan

Mass grave of Jews murdered in Operation Harvest Festival, 3–4 November 1943. Some 600 Slovak Jews were shot at Majdanek.^[91]

The Working Group's contacts at the Slovak railway informed them that deportations would not resume until the spring. The Working Group contacted Wisliceny about the evacuation of Slovak Jewish children from Lublin to Switzerland or Palestine; nothing came of this.^[144] Weissmandl, who credited the bribes to Wisliceny with stopping the trains, believed that the Slovak Jewish leaders had an obligation to help their coreligionists in other Nazi-occupied countries. He proposed attempting to bribe Wisliceny's superiors into halting all transports to the General Government, a proposal that became known as the "Europa Plan". Many of the Working Group's members were skeptical of the Europa Plan, arguing that Wisliceny had been acting on his own. A larger-scale operation would therefore be doomed to fail, and might trigger the deportation of the remaining Slovak Jews.^[142] Only Fleischmann, Weissmandl, and Neumann thought that the Europa Plan was worth pursuing.^[145][146]

In November, Wisliceny told the Working Group that the head of the Reich Main Security Office, Heinrich Himmler, had agreed to halt deportations to the General Government in exchange for $3 million.^[103] Hochberg was arrested later that month for bribery and corruption.^{[lower-alpha 9]} Steiner, and later Fleischmann, were able to meet directly with Wisliceny.^[147][148] The Working Group also took effective control of the ÚŽ's day-to-day operations.^[149] In December, Himmler obtained permission from Hitler to initiate negotiations to ransom Jews for hard currency.^[150] However, the Working Group was unable to raise the money. Mayer's superiors believed that the negotiations were a trick, but he funneled money to the Working Group, although his assistance was vastly insufficient. According to Fatran, Mayer may have been attempting to conceal the insolvency of the JDC in Switzerland, disclosure of which would have hampered rescue efforts.^[151][152] Mayer also tried to convince the Red Cross to send a representative to the Slovak Jews. The Hungarian Jewish community was either unable or unwilling to help.^[152] The Working Group contacted Abraham Silberschein of the World Jewish Congress, and Nathan Schwalb of Hehalutz.^[103] Schwalb became a committed supported of the plan and contacted Palestine directly, repeating the Working Group's impression that Wisliceny had kept his promises.^[153]

Due to miscommunications, it was not until a March 1943 visit by Eliezer Kaplan, treasurer of the Jewish Agency, that the scale of the Europa Plan was understood by leaders in Palestine.^[154] Kaplan believed that the plan was impossible, but he relayed more optimistic opinions from some of his colleagues in Istanbul.^[155] The Yishuv expressed willingness to help fund the plan,^[156] even though Kaplan, David Ben-Gurion, Apolinary Hartglas, and other leaders of the Jewish Agency and the Yishuv suspected that Wisliceny's offer was insincere extortion.^[157][158] In the meantime, Wisliceny had departed Slovakia to supervise the deportation and murder of Thessaloniki Jews.^{[159][lower-alpha 10]}

The attention of the Working Group was diverted by the threat of resumed transports from Slovakia, due to begin in April 1943.^[159] As the deadline approached, Fleischmann and Weissmandl became even more militant in their promotion of the plan to Jewish leaders. They insisted that the plans were feasible, that the Nazis could be bribed, and that the laws on currency transfer could be bypassed. In the end, they received only $36,000 by April.^[155] However, deportations from Slovakia did not resume.^[159][160] Fleischmann met with Wisliceny, who told her that all deportations would be halted if the Nazis were paid a $200,000 down payment by June.^[160] The Yishuv managed to transfer about half this sum to the Working Group, probably by laundering contributions of overseas Jewish organizations and smuggling diamonds into Turkey.^[161] Higher-ups in the JDC, the WJC, and other organizations believed that the Nazi promises were empty,^[162] blocking the distribution of funds to Mayer and to the Yishuv, and the Swiss government obstructed currency transfers on the required scale. Mayer helped to the best of his ability but was only able to smuggle $42,000 to the Working Group by June and a further $53,000 in August and September.^[163] The Working Group finally had the down payment in September.^[164] Part of the Working Group's requests as part of the Europa Plan was improved communication with the deportees. According to Fatran, Wisliceny did enable the delivery of thousands of letters from Jews imprisoned at Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Theresienstadt in late summer 1943.^[165]

Takeover of the Jewish Council

In December 1943, the Working Group took advantage of a reorganization in the Slovak government to remove Arped Sebestyen, the ineffectual leader of the ÚŽ. The Jewish community was allowed to choose his successor and the Working Group voted unanimously for Oskar Neumann, effectively uniting the Working Group and the ÚŽ. The Working Group activists even distributed information about rescue operations in official ÚŽ messages. As the Axis lost the war, planning on how to keep the Jewish community alive during the defeat was the primary focus of the Working Group's meetings during the next few months. The activists continued sending aid to surviving Jews in Poland and Theresienstadt, while the resumption of deportations from Slovakia constantly threatened.^{[176][177][149]}

The Working Group leadership was still suffering from the aftermath of the October 1943 "Koso affair" and Fleischmann was forced to go in and out of hiding to avoid arrest.^[176] She was arrested again on 9 January 1944 and imprisoned for four months at Nováky camp and Ilava prison. The Working Group sought her release and escape to Palestine, but Fleischmann refused to leave Bratislava.^{[178][179][lower-alpha 12]} The Slovak authorities began to re-register Jews, prompting some to flee to Hungary. After the invasion of Hungary in March 1944, this flow reversed and Slovak and Hungarian Jews fled back across the border to Slovakia.^[180] From sympathetic Slovak railway officials, the Working Group learned of the preparation of 120 trains for Jews deported from Hungary, and sent this information to Budapest, where it was received by the end of April.^[181]

Auschwitz Protocols

Aerial photograph of Auschwitz in 1944

The Working Group played a central role in the distribution of the Auschwitz Protocols in spring 1944. The most important part of the Protocols was the Vrba-Wetzler Report written by escaped Auschwitz inmates Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who reached Slovakia on 21 April. After the Working Group heard of Vrba and Wetzler's escape, Neumann was dispatched to interview them; the report was completed on 27 April.^[182][183] At 40 pages, the report was considered more credible than previous reports on Auschwitz forwarded to Britain by the Polish government-in-exile.^[184][185] A copy of the report was sent to the Judenrat of Ungvar in Carpathian Ruthenia, which unsuccessfully tried to suppress its contents. Although the information was transmitted to two other Carpathian Ruthenian transit ghettos, the Jews were unable to act on the report.^[186]

The general information contained in the protocols was sent by post and reached Budapest by early May. Using non-Jewish couriers, the actual report was smuggled into Hungary, reaching an antifascist Lutheran organization in Budapest in late May. There were probably other attempts by the Working Group to send the protocols that were not successful.^[187] Using its ties to the Slovak resistance, the Working Group sent information in the report on 22 May to Jaromír Kopecký, who received a full copy by 10 June.^[188][189] In an attached letter, the Working Group informed Kopecký about the preparation of deportations from Hungary.^[189] Kopecký transmitted this information to the United States State Department^[74] and the ICRC in a 23 June message stating that 12,000 Hungarian Jews were being sent daily to their deaths.^[190] The Czechoslovak government-in-exile publicized the information in hopes of preventing the murder of Czech Jews imprisoned at the Theresienstadt family camp.^[191][192] At its request, the BBC German Service used information about the family camp in warnings to the German leadership that they would face trial for their crimes, broadcast 15 and 16 June.^[193][194] It is unclear whether these warnings actually influenced the fate of the prisoners in the camp.^[107] On 6 June, two additional escapees, Arnošt Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz, reached Slovakia and provided more information on the murder of the Hungarian Jews.^{[195][183][lower-alpha 13]}

Auschwitz bombing proposal

Bombing of Budapest in 1944

On 16 or 18 May, Weissmandl sent an emotional plea for help to Nathan Schwalb and detailed steps that the Allies could take to mitigate the disaster. Among his suggestions was to "blow up from the air the centers of annihilation" at Auschwitz II-Birkenau and the Carpathian Ruthenian and Slovak rail infrastructure used to transport Hungarian Jews to the camp.^{[196][188][197]} Kopecký forwarded these suggestions, and on 4 July the Czechoslovak government-in-exile officially recommended bombing the crematoria and the rail infrastructure, whose military significance was emphasized.^[198] Although neither Auschwitz nor its rail lines were ever bombed, a cable mentioning the proposal was sent on 24 June by Roswell McClelland, the War Refugee Board representative in Switzerland, and intercepted by the Hungarian government,^[199][200] which had previously claimed that the Allied aerial bombing of military targets in Budapest in April was directed by an international Jewish conspiracy.^[201] According to Bauer, the mention of bombing in the cable was interpreted by Hungarian leaders as confirming this erroneous belief.^[202] By early July, the only remaining Hungarian Jews were in Budapest.^[203] Hungary's Fascist regent Miklós Horthy believed that their presence protected the city from carpet-bombing,^[202] and that the bombing of Budapest on 2 July by the United States Army Air Forces was a reaction to the deportations.^[200]

Information from the Vrba-Wetzler Report was smuggled from Hungary to diplomat George Mantello in Switzerland, who published it on 4 July.^[188][107] In the next eighteen days, at least 383 articles in Swiss and international media were published about Auschwitz based on information from the report.^[107] Because of the publicity, Allied leaders including US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill threatened Horthy with a war crimes trial if he did not stop the transports.^[204] Pope Pius XII, Gustav V of Sweden, and the Red Cross also made appeals.^[199] Horthy offered to allow 10,000 Jewish children to leave Hungary and unofficially halted deportations on 7 July, with some 200,000 Jews still in Budapest.^[205][199] He justified his change in policy to the Germans by claiming that a Judenrein Budapest would be carpet-bombed.^[202][200] The mounting international pressure and the fact that Horthy could no longer claim ignorance of the fate of deportees, having received a copy of the report, also probably played a significant role in the decision.^[202] At the time 12,000 Jews a day were transported to Auschwitz.^[206]

"Blood for goods" negotiations

After the invasion of Hungary, Wisliceny was sent to Hungary to organize the deportation of the Hungarian Jews. Weissmandl provided him with a letter in Hebrew stating that he was a reliable negotiator, and told him to show it to Pinchas Freudiger, the Zionist leader Rudolf Kastner, and Baroness Edith Weiss, from an influential Neolog family.^[207][208] Freudiger focused on saving only his family and friends, and Weiss was in hiding, but Kastner was the chair of the Aid and Rescue Committee and able to take action.^[209] The Aid and Rescue Committee was under the impression that hefty bribes to Wisliceny had saved the remaining Jews in Slovakia, and sought to establish connections with him immediately after his arrival in Budapest.^[210] The negotiations, known as "blood for goods", proposed the rescue of some 1 million Jews still living under Nazi occupation, primarily in Hungary.^[211] Joel Brand and other Jewish leaders ultimately adopted some tactics used during the Slovakia and Europa Plan negotiations, including the use of forged letters.^[212]

Kastner visited Bratislava in the summer of 1944 and appraised the Working Group of events in Hungary, including the release of the Kastner train to Bergen-Belsen; the passengers were eventually allowed to leave for Switzerland. He wanted the Working Group to help him raise money and obtain other commodities for ongoing rescue efforts. The Working Group agreed to help, but asked Kastner to ask for a moratorium on deportations from Slovakia. Fleischmann organized a committee of local Jewish businessmen for fulfilling Kastner's requests. Kastner visited Bratislava again in late August, accompanied by Kurt Becher's adjutant, Max Grueson, one of the Nazis involved in the negotiations. After the Working Group presented Grueson with a list of vital commodities that they could provide, Grueson promised to ask his superiors to allow Slovak Jews to flee. Before anything could be done, the Slovak National Uprising broke out upon Germany's invasion of Slovakia.^[213]

Overall situation

Territorial control during the first days of the Slovak National Uprising. The Working Group was based in Bratislava, at extreme left.

Because of Germany's imminent military defeat, much of the Slovak populace and the leadership of the army switched its allegiance to the Allies. Increasing partisan activity in the mountains caused a dilemma for Jews and the leadership in particular. In order to counter the perceived security threat of Jews in rural eastern Slovakia, the Slovak government proposed roundups; the Working Group convinced them to concentrate the Jews in western Slovakia. While the Working Group did not support an uprising because it feared the consequences for Slovakia's remaining Jews, Neumann gave money for an underground group in Nováky labor camp to arm itself in preparation for joining the partisans. On 29 August, Germany invaded Slovakia in response to the increase in partisan sabotage. The same day, the Slovak National Uprising was launched, but it was crushed by the end of October.^[214]

Jews fought with the partisans in substantial numbers. Both German and Slovak propaganda blamed them for the uprising,^[215][216] providing the Germans with an excuse to implement the Final Solution.^[217] Eichmann sent SS-Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner to Bratislava to oversee the deportation and murder of some 25,000 surviving Jews in Slovakia.^[218][219] Einsatzgruppe H, the Hlinka Guard Emergency Divisions, and Volksdeutsche paramilitary groups rounded up Jews and concentrated them in Sereď for deportation to Auschwitz. Jews in eastern Slovakia were deported from other Slovak camps or massacred.^[220][217]

Developments in Bratislava

Immediately after the German invasion, Neumann disbanded the ÚŽ and told its members to go into hiding or flee. Some Bratislava Jews managed to infiltrate the German intelligence operations and delivered reports to the Working Group each evening, which the leaders used to decide whether to flee.^[221] The Working Group's leadership had contracted significantly, as Steiner was caught in a partisan-controlled area and did not return to Bratislava, Frieder was under arrest, and Weissmandl and his family had been caught in a 5 September raid on Nitra and were held at Sereď. Fleischmann had the opportunity to escape to the mountains, but refused to abandon her post. Weissmandl, whose absence was most disruptive, was released with Grueson's help and allowed to return to Bratislava.^[222] After it learned that Alois Brunner was coming to Bratislava, the Working Group asked Grueson to advance the date of his visit. With his help, the activists contacted Otto Koslowski, the head of the SD in Slovakia. The Slovak activists offered a list of goods worth seven million Swiss francs, including fifteen tractors, in exchange for the release of 7,000 Slovak Jews to Switzerland. They claimed that these products, initially collected for the ransom of Hungarian Jews, could be shipped within a week and proposed to send the Slovak Jews to Switzerland simultaneously with the dispatch of the goods in the opposite direction.^[223][224]

Koslowski told the Working Group that a reply would arrive later, but at the next meeting, he demanded that the ÚŽ arrange for the orderly collection of Bratislava's Jews at Sereď. He also told them that Brunner would arrive soon; on 18 September, Grueson returned to Bratislava and warned the Working Group not to negotiate with Brunner. According to Fatran and Bauer, the Bratislava activists should have immediately broken off negotiations and warned Jews to go into hiding or flee to the mountains.^[223][219] It is unclear whether the Working Group actually believed that the negotiations might be successful, or was merely using them as a delaying tactic, hoping to prevent the murder of Slovak Jews until the end of the war.^[223] Brunner arrived in Bratislava, probably on 22 or 23 September,^[225] and the Working Group presented the proposal to trade commodities for Jewish lives. They also suggested improvements to Sereď to make the camp economically productive, as it had been before the uprising.^[226] Brunner feigned interest in both of these proposals in order to distract the Working Group, arranging a visit to Sereď two days later.^{[226] [227]} On 24 September, Fleischmann wrote a letter to Switzerland asking for money for a new round of ransom negotiations.^[228] During the visit to Sereď, the Jewish professionals from Bratislava learned of the murder of several inmates by guards, prompting the Working Group to recommend that Bratislava Jews go into hiding.^[226] On 26 September, Fleischmann's office was raided, providing the Germans with a list of Jews. The Working Group, apparently not realizing the significance of this development, protested to Brunner, who agreed to punish the culprits.^[229]

The 28 September roundup

Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia arrive at Auschwitz, May 1944

On 28 September, Weissmandl and Kováč were summonded by Brunner on a pretext of being needed for a project at Sereď; they decided to obey and were imprisoned in Brunner's office, where they witnessed the use of the stolen list of Jews to prepare for a major roundup. Among the Jews at large in the city, competing rumors alleged a large operation and that nothing would happen.^[229] That night, Einsatzkommando 29 and local collaborators caught 1,800 Jews in Bratislava, including most of the Working Group's leadership.^[219][230] Those arrested were held in the Jewish Council's headquarters until 6 am, when they were overloaded onto freight cars and transported to Sereď, arriving at 2 am on 30 September. The first transport from Sereď since 1942 departed that same day for Auschwitz, carrying 1,860 victims.^[231]

Deported with his family on 10 October, Weissmandl managed to jump off the train,^[229][83] and was later rescued by Kastner and Becher and taken to Switzerland.^[232] After the roundup, Fleischmann and Kováč were allowed to remain in Bratislava, but she refused to betray Jews in hiding and was arrested on 15 October.^[179][229] Two days later, she was deported on the last transport from Slovakia to be gassed at Auschwitz.^[219][229] Designated "return unwanted" by Brunner, she was murdered upon arrival.^[228][179] Steiner, Frieder, Neumann, and Kováč survived, but the Working Group's treasurer, William Fürst, was deported and murdered.^[233] In the second round of persecution, 13,500 Jews were deported (including 8,000 to Auschwitz) and several hundred murdered in Slovakia.^[220][234]

Overall

While the Holocaust was ongoing, the Yishuv organizations in Istanbul noted the effectiveness of the Working Group's courier network and its inventiveness at reaching otherwise inaccesible locations in occupied Poland, describing their "only window into the theatre of the catastrophe". Information from the Working Group's reports spurred the groups to meet and take action to mitigate the Holocaust. While the aid program could not save Jews from the Final Solution, it did save an unknown number from starvation temporarily.^[84] Furthermore, the aid program was undertaken with very little assistance from the Red Cross, which sought to maintain its neutrality by avoiding confrontation with Nazi Germany's genocidal policies.^[235] Fatran emphasizes that, although the Europa Plan was "unrealistic" in hindsight, it was undertaken with the best of motives,^[84] and while the bulk of Slovak Jewry was not saved, this was not due to the faults of the Working Group.^[236]

Memorial to the Working Group in Bratislava^{[lower-alpha 2]}

According to Bauer, the Working Group was the only underground organization in occupied Europe to unite the ideological spectrum (excluding communists), and the only Jewish organization to try to save Jews in other countries.^[237] Livia Rothkirchen, who states that the "relentless" efforts of the Working Group achieved concrete results in multiple operations, also emphasizes the uniqueness of a resistance group operating within a Nazi-directed Judenrat, which was necessary for the Working Group's successes.^[238] Katarína Hradská argues that in order to achieve its goals, the Working Group had to collaborate with the Germans, but this ultimately led the members into self-delusion due to their desperation to save other Jews from death.^[239] In his introduction to a biography of Fleischmann, Simon Wiesenthal quotes Gideon Hausner, the lead prosecutor at the Eichmann trial, who stated that "Gisi Fleischmann's name deserves to be immortalized in the annals of our people, and her memory should be bequeathed to further generations as a radiant example of heroism and of boundless devotion".^[240]

Nevertheless, both Bauer and Fatran acknowledged the mistakes of the Working Group, especially after the invasion in September 1944. According to Bauer, bribing Wisliceny was misguided since he did not actually stop the transports, as they believed.^[96] In additon, the failure to resist the Nazis in September 1944 "cast a dark shadow over all of them" even though "it would have made no difference in any case".^[237] Fatran writes that the conduct of the Working Group after the invasion can be explained by their previous apparent success with negotiation and their desperation to save the remaining Slovak Jews, but recognizes that their actions were greatly mistaken.^[165] Bauer emphasises that despite their faults and ultimate failure, the Working Group's members did try to rescue Jews and therefore deserve to be publicly recognized as heroes.^[241]

Role in hiatus in deportations

According to Friling and Bauer, the bribes were not the key factor in the two-year hiatus in deportations from Slovakia; the Working Group's lobbying of the Catholic Church and sympathetic Slovak officials was more effective.^[103][242] However, Bauer acknowledges that the bribing of Wisliceny may "have helped to solidify an already existing tendency".^[243] Bauer notes that most of the Jews not exempt from deportation had already been deported or fled into Hungary; the halt in deportations on 1 August 1942 came shortly after several Slovak officials including Morávek had accepted bribes from the Working Group, while Wisliceny did not receive a bribe until 17 August.^{[lower-alpha 14]} More cautiously, German historian Peter Longerich asserts that "it remains unresolved if [the payment to Wisliceny] had any causal connection with the suspension of deportations from Slovakia".^[245] Fatran emphasizes the role of the Working Group in distributing reports of Nazi atrocities to Slovak leaders, who backpedaled on deportations in late 1942.^[102][130] Rothkirchen states that there were three roughly equal factors: the Working Group's activities, pressure from the Vatican, and the growing unpopularity of deportations among gentile Slovaks, who had to witness the violence used by the Hlinka Guard in rounding up Jews.^{[246][lower-alpha 15]} Longerich credits the shift in public opinion with the decisive role, but adds that the Working Group played "a significant role".^[249] Israeli historian Shlomo Aronson states that the stopping of transports was not due to Wisliceny, but a complicated mix of domestic political factors, bribes for Slovak officials who organized trasports, the Caholic Church's intervention, and implementation of the Final Solution in other countries.^[250] According to Slovak historian Ivan Kamenec, diplomatic pressure from the Vatican and the Allies and internal pressures, including the visible brutality of the deportations, combined to halt the transports. Kamenec emphasizes the economic aspect; the deportations harmed the economy and the remaining Jews were in economically useful positions.^[251]

In early 1943, the Germans put increasing pressure on the Slovak State to resume deportations, but Slovak politicians resisted. Both Rothkirchen and Longerich emphasize the role of the defeat at Stalingrad in crystallizing popular opinion against the Nazis, and preventing the resumption of the deportations in 1943,^[215][234] although Bauer credits the Working Group with preventing the resumption of deportations.^[177] Friling attributes the fact that transports were not resumed in 1943 to the intercession of Kaplan and the Working Group with the Catholic Church.^[36] Fatran identifies the Working Group's efforts to spread news of mass death and the increasing pressure of the Catholic Church as the main factors, along with fascist politicians' fears that they would be tried for war crims in the event of an Axis defeat.^[100][149] Fatran also points out that property confiscation and deportation did not bring the prosperity that antisemitic politicians had claimed;^[130] Kamenec notes that in December 1942 Slovak legislators noted the detrimental effect of the deportations and other anti-Jewish measures on the economy.^[252] Kamenec believes that the transports were not resumed due to the economic factors and strong diplomatic pressure from the Vatican and the Allies, despite increasing Nazi pressure to continue with deportations.^[253]

Feasibility of the Europa Plan

Holocaust memorial in Bratislava

It is unlikely that the Nazis would have been willing to compromise on the implementation of the Final Solution for any sum that the Jews could raise and illegally transfer.^{[lower-alpha 16]} Friling and Bauer agree that the Nazis were willing to temporarily spare some 24,000 Slovak Jews in 1942 because there were other populations of Jews that could be exterminated with fewer political repercussions.^{[243][255][lower-alpha 17]} However, Friling expresses doubt that a larger-scale ransom effort could have been successful. As a personal bribe to Himmler or other Nazi officials, it would be difficult to see how it could have had much effect on the complicated bureaucracy of the Nazi murder apparatus. In addition, the Europa Plan's cost per head was orders of magnitude lower than other Jewish ransom efforts occurring simultaneously in Transnistria^{[lower-alpha 18]} and the Netherlands,^{[lower-alpha 19]} making it a bad deal from the Nazi perspective.^[258][255]

Friling instead suggests that it is most likely that Wisliceny devised the scheme purely for the purpose of extorting money from the Jews, and that he never had any intention of keeping his side of the deal.^[259] Bauer argues that Himmler approved the opening of negotiations in November 1942 but that the negotiations "lacked a concrete basis" because Wisliceny did not receive any more instructions.^[146] According to Bauer and Longerich, Himmler's goal was to negotiate with the Americans through the Jews.^[245][146] Rothkirchen thinks this is possible but not proven, and suggests that the Nazis intended to influence popular opinion in the free world and discredit reports of the Final Solution reaching the Allies. She notes that Himmler's decision to suspend negotiations in September 1943 coincided with the arrest of Carl Langbehn, who was trying to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies on Himmler's behalf.^{[260][151][261]} Shlomo Aronson states that the negotiations might have been coordinated with antisemitic propaganda broadcast to the West, in which the war was depicted as being fought on behalf of Jews.^[262]

Other perspectives

Weissmandl and Fleischmann believed that the Europa Plan failed because too little money was provided too late and that this was due to the indifference of mainstream Jewish organizations. Perhaps influenced by antisemitic conspiracy theories exaggerating the wealth and power of "World Jewry", Fleischmann and Weissmandl believed that the international Jewish community had millions of dollars instantly available.^[263] The Slovak Jewish leaders did not understand the impact of the Allies' currency restrictions.^[244][264] Both tended to "take Wisliceny's statements at face value";^{[lower-alpha 20]} it was not until 1944 that Weissmandl wrote that he suspected that the negotiations were a sham.^[265][266] According to Bauer, "the effect of this false rendition of events on Jewish historical consciousness after the Holocaust was enormous, because it implied that the outside Jewish world, nonbelievers in the non-Zionist and Zionist camps alike, had betrayed European—in this case Slovak—Jewry by not sending the money in time."^[243] Weissmandl claimed after the war that the Jewish Agency, the JDC, and other secular Jewish organizations had deliberately abandoned Slovak Jews to the gas chambers in order to prevent them from settling in Palestine.^{[267][166][lower-alpha 21]} His accusations have formed a cornerstone of Haredi historiography on the Holocaust, his collaboration with Fleischmann—a woman and a Zionist—minimized or elided.^[269] Many Haredi writers take Weissmandl's allegations at face value, claiming that mainstream scholars are influenced by unconscious pro-Zionist bias,^[270] as part of a religious explanation of the Holocaust as being caused by the abandonment of Orthodox lifestyles.^[262]

In 1979 and 1984, John S. Conway published two articles in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, a German-language scholarly journal. The first article was based on the false premise that Lenard had escaped from Majdanek in April and information on the mass murder of Jews in gas chambers was available to the Working Group by the end of the month. In both articles, Conway claimed that the Working Group had collaborated with the Nazis by negotiating with Wisliceny and failing to distribute the Vrba-Wetzler Report to Jews in Slovakia. According to Conway, this was to cover up the complicity of members of the Working Group who had allegedly drawn up lists of Jews to be deported.^{[271][96][272]} Bauer pointed out that only Hochberg assisted with deportations—and even he did not draw up deportation lists^[132]—while members of the Working Group contributed to his arrest.^[29][273] Contrary to Conway's assertion that the Working Group failed to warn Jews not to board the trains, the Working Group, along with Orthodox organizations and the Zionist youth movements, advised Jews to flee to Hungary and helped smuggle them across the border, even before information on extermination was available.^{[274][275][96]} Conway and Ruth Linn, who repeated the allegations, accused the mainstream Israeli historians who studied the Working Group of caving in to the pressure of a Zionist establishment and promoting a "hegemonic narrative".^[276]

Notes

Citations

Bibliography