[27] Wisliceny formed the Department for Special Affairs within the ÚŽ to ensure the prompt implementation of Nazi decrees, appointing Karol Hochberg (an ambitious, unprincipled Viennese Jew) as its director.

[3][57] The group met on 25 February, agreeing to take a three-pronged approach to stopping the transports:[35] The petition from community leaders, delivered on 5 March, used pragmatic arguments for allowing the Jews to remain in Slovakia.

[74][75] Through the couriers, the Working Group obtain reasonably accurate information on the horrible conditions in which deportees were held; this was in addition to vague allusions in censored messages the Germans allowed them to send.

[85] 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.

Dozens of escape attempts were made; the most significant was that of Dionýz Lénard, who returned to Slovakia in July and reported on the high Jewish death rate from hunger (but not on the Final Solution).

The Working Group enlisted him and similar individuals to set up smuggling operations in Prešov and other border towns, including Kežmarok, Žilina, and Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš.

[102][103] Most of the correspondence was intercepted by the Abwehr in Vienna; the letters were returned to Bratislava, where German police attaché Franz Golz gave them to Wisliceny (who had jurisdiction over Jewish issues).

Coordinating its efforts with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Jewish Self-Help Organization in Kraków and relatives of deportees, the Working Group attempted to track down exact addresses for aid parcels.

[92] Attempts to send money via the Slovak National Bank failed when the recipients were not found, forcing the Working Group to rely even more on the couriers (who were also charged with finding and aiding escapees).

These contacts informed the Slovak Jewish leaders that Wisliceny was susceptible to bribery and the SS hierarchy was eager to get in touch with representatives of "International Jewry", whose influence on the policies of the Western Allies was greatly exaggerated in the Nazi imagination.

[121][122][135] Hochberg also relayed Wisliceny's suggestion to expand the labor camps at Sereď, Nováky, and Vyhne to "productivize" the remaining Jews and create a financial incentive to keep them in Slovakia.

Wisliceny pointed out that Tiso, a member of a rival faction of the Slovak People's Party, had recently claimed in a speech that Slovakia's development could only progress after the remaining Jews were deported.

[151] Wisliceny forwarded $20,000 to the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office in October with the knowledge of the German ambassador to Slovakia, Hanns Ludin, via police attaché Franz Golz.

[156][157] In November 1942, Wisliceny told the Working Group that Reich Security Main Office interim chief Heinrich Himmler had agreed to halt deportations to the General Government zone in exchange for $3 million.

[176] On 2 September 1943, Wisliceny met with Working Group leaders and announced that the Europa Plan had been cancelled[177] because the delay in payment caused the Nazis to doubt "Ferdinand Roth"'s reliability.

During this meeting, Wisliceny attempted to reinforce the group's trust in him by leaking information that the Nazis were in the process of transferring 5,000 Polish Jewish children to Theresienstadt; from there, they would be sent to Switzerland if a British ransom was paid.

When Fleischmann was caught bribing a Slovak official's wife in October 1943, an incident known as the "Koso affair", communications with Jewish organizations in Switzerland were severed, so the Working Group could not guarantee that it would be able to raise the money.

[193] After the German invasion, the Working Group learned from sympathetic Slovak railway officials about the preparation of 120 trains for Jews deported from Hungary and relayed the information to Budapest, where it was received by the end of April.

[204] The Czechoslovak government-in-exile asked the BBC European Service to publicize the information in the hope of preventing the murder of Czech Jews imprisoned at the Theresienstadt family camp at Auschwitz.

[220] Hungary's Fascist regent, Miklós Horthy, believed that their presence protected the city from carpet-bombing[219] and the 2 July bombing of Budapest by the United States Army Air Forces was a reaction to the deportations.

[112] 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.

Weissmandl gave him a letter (written in Hebrew) saying that he was a reliable negotiator, and told him to show it to Pinchas Freudiger, Rudolf Kastner, and Baroness Edith Weiss (part of an influential Neolog family).

[261] 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, recognizing that their actions were mistaken.

[275] According to Rothkirchen, 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 witnessed the Hlinka Guard's violence in rounding up Jews).

[6] Aronson says that the halt was due to a complicated mix of domestic political factors, bribes for Slovak officials who organized transports, the Catholic Church's intervention, and implementation of the Final Solution in other countries.

[280] 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,[233][258] while Bauer credits the Working Group's bribery of Slovak officials.

[188] 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 crimes if the Axis was defeated.

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 readily available.

[303][304] The first article was based on the false premise that Lenard had escaped from Majdanek in April 1942, and information on the mass murder of Jews in gas chambers was available to the Working Group by the end of the month.

[307][308] Fatran criticized Conway's thesis for its selective reliance on a few pieces of evidence which were mistranslated or misinterpreted, describing his argument that the Working Group collaborated with the Nazis as "speculative and unproven";[309] Bauer deems this idea "preposterous".