ADSS 9.217 Burzio to Maglione Deportations suspended

Fifteen months after the first deportation train left Slovakia for Auschwitz, the charge d'affaires in Bratislava, Giuseppe Burzio telegrammed the Vatican with the news that the Slovak government had suspended all future deportations.  This was to give the surviving Jews of Slovakia a respite of sorts for several months.  In the footnotes are a succession of references to the failure to get reliable information on the fate of the deportees and a resumption of the Antisemitic campaign in August with a focus on Jews with forged baptismal certificates.  It is worth noting that that the information on baptismal certificates was passed to Burzio by the Italian Embassy.

This is the last significant document in ADSS on Slovakia until February 1944.

ADSS 9.217 

Giuseppe Burzio, charge d’affaires, Bratislava to Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione.

Reference: Telegram 37 (AEE 3460/43)

Location and date:  Presbourg (Bratislava), 04.06.1943 @ 1500; arrived Rome 05.06.1943 @ 1115 hrs.

Summary statement: Information on the situation of Slovak Jews.

Language: Italian

I received your telegram number 37. (1)

The transfer of the Jews is suspended.  The Minister of the Interior informed me that the transfers was only in the planning state (?) and the Government has not yet decided about visas – about 200 or less. (2)

Cross references: 

(1)  See ADSS 9.214, 196.

(2)  A few days later Burzio informed the Secretary of State: “… Except in very exceptional cases, and by clandestine means, there is no way to get information on the fate of the fifty thousand Jews deported from Slovakia”. 11.06.1943, report number 1649, (AES 4269/43).  In late August, it was learned that the Antisemitic campaign had resumed in Slovakia, and Minister Mach declared: “… many baptismal records and other documents of those so-called ‘essential to the national economy’ were found to be false.  In the future there will be strict control of such documents and holders of false documents will be punished by law …”

Information supplied by the Italian Embassy, 29.08.1943 (AES 5656/43).