Editing Michael Dov Weissmandl (section)

==World War II and the Holocaust==
While at Oxford University, Weissmandl volunteered on 1 September 1939 to return to Slovakia as an agent of [[World Agudath Israel]]. When the Nazis gathered sixty rabbis from [[Burgenland]] and sent them to Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovakia refused them entry and Austria would not take them back. Weissmandl flew to England, where he was received by the [[Archbishop of Canterbury]] and the Foreign Office. Explaining the tragic situation, he succeeded in obtaining entry visas to England for the sixty rabbis.<ref name="biography"/>

===The Working Group===
{{main |Bratislava Working Group}} 
When the Nazis, aided by members of the puppet Slovak government, began their moves against the Slovak Jews in 1942, members of the Slovak ''[[Judenrat]]'' formed an underground organization called the [[Bratislava Working Group]]. It was led by [[Gisi Fleischmann]] and  Weissmandl. The group's main activity was to help and save Jews as much as possible, in part through payment of bribes and ransom to German and Slovak officials. In 1942, the Working Group initiated high-level ransom negotiations with the Germans (ref. Fuchs and Kranzler books).{{page needed|date=July 2018}} The transportation of Slovak Jews was in fact halted for two years after they arranged a $50,000 (in 1952 dollars) ransom deal with the Nazi SS official [[Dieter Wisliceny]].<ref>Dr. Abraham Fuchs, ''The Unheeded Cry''</ref><ref>Dr. David Kranzler, ''Thy Brother's Blood''</ref>

Largely with the help of diplomats, [[Gisi Fleischmann]] and possibly also Weissmandl was able to smuggle letters or telegrams to people he hoped would help save the Jews of Europe, alerting them to the progressive Nazi destruction of European Jewry. He and Gisi Fleischmann managed to send letters to [[Winston Churchill]] and [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], and he entrusted a diplomat to deliver a letter to the [[Vatican City|Vatican]] for [[Pope Pius XII]]. He originated the proposal via Rabbi [[Solomon Schonfeld]] in London to [[Auschwitz bombing debate|bomb the rails]] leading to [[Auschwitz]], but this, along with subsequent suggestions from others, were ignored.

The Working Group helped distribute the [[Auschwitz Protocols]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205784.pdf|title=Yad Vashem}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/mantello-rescue-mission/auschwitz-protocol|title=The Auschwitz Protocol — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|website=www.ushmm.org}}</ref> [[Kasztner]] was the first to get it in April 1944 during his  Bratislava visit. The recipients didn't do anything meaningful with the report except [[Moshe Krausz]] in Budapest who sent it to [[George Mantello]] in Switzerland around 19 June 1944 via Romanian diplomat [[Florian Manilou]] who was Mantello's friend.  Mantello received the reports early 21 June 1944 and publicized its content right away. This immediately triggered large-scale grass roots demonstrations in Switzerland, sermons in Swiss churches about the barbarism, tragic plight of Jews and starting 24 June 1944 an extraordinary Swiss press campaign of about 400 articles in German, French, Italian protesting the atrocities against Jews.

The events in Switzerland and possibly other considerations led to threats of retribution against Hungary's Regent [[Miklós Horthy]] by President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]], [[Winston Churchill]] and others. This was one of the main factors which forced Horthy to order on 7 July 1944 stopping the death camp transports by Hungary, which until then took 
about 12,000 Hungarian Jews a day to Auschwitz.<ref>Jenő Lévai, ''Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry'' (''Fekete könyv a magyar zsidóság szenvedéseiről'', Budapest 1946 or 1948 [https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/l-x00e9-vai-jen-x00f6][https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%94_%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%95%D7%90%D7%99][https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9vai_Jen%C5%91])</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The man who stopped the trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland's finest hour|author=Kranzler, David|date=2000|publisher=Syracuse University Press|isbn=0815628730|location=Syracuse, N.Y.|oclc=43662123}}</ref>

===Deportation===
In October 1944, Weissmandl and his family were rounded up and put on a train headed for [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]].<ref name=Paldiel>{{cite book | author = Mordecai Paldiel | title = Saving One's Own — Jewish Rescuers during the Holocaust | pages = 118–120 | publisher = University of Nebraska Press | year = 2017}}</ref> Weissmandl escaped from the sealed train by opening a hole with a saw he had secreted in a loaf of bread.<ref name=Paldiel/> He jumped from the moving train and made his way to [[Bratislava]].<ref name=Paldiel/> There he found shelter in a bunker in a storage room of a private house, along with 17 other Jews who included the [[Stropkov|Rebbe of Stropkov]] Menachem Mendel Halberstam.<ref name=Paldiel/>

[[Rezső Kasztner]] visited the bunker several times, once, to the consternation of the inhabitants, in the company of SS officer Max Grüson.<ref name=Paldiel/> In April 1945, Kasztner visited again, this time in the company of another SS officer who took the party to Switzerland in a truck with an escort of German soldiers.<ref name=Paldiel/> On arriving in Switzerland, Weissmandl suffered a major heart attack.<ref name=Paldiel/>