of anti-Jewish laws in Europe. The president could issue exemptions protecting individual Jews from the law. Employed Jews were initially exempt from some of the code's requirements, such as wearing the star. The racial definition of Jews was criticized by the Catholic Church, and converts were eventually exempted from some of the requirements. The Hlinka Guard and increased assaults on Jews, engaged in antisemitic demonstrations on a daily basis, and harassed non-Jews judged insufficiently antisemitic. The law enabled the Central Economic Office to force Jews to change their residence. This provision was put into effect on 4 October 1941, when 10,000 of 15,000 Jews in Bratislava (who were not employed or intermarried) were ordered to move to fourteen towns. The relocation was paid for and carried out by the ÚŽ's Department of Special Tasks. Although the Jews were ordered to leave by 31 December, fewer than 7,000 people had moved by March 1942. Deportations (1942) Planning The highest levels of the Slovak government were aware by late 1941 of mass murders of Jews in German-occupied territories. In July 1941, Wisliceny organized a visit by Slovak government officials to several camps run by Organization Schmelt, which imprisoned Jews in East Upper Silesia to employ them in forced labor on the Reichsautobahn. The visitors understood that Jews in the camps lived under conditions which would eventually cause their deaths. Slovak soldiers participated in the invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union; they brought word of the mass shootings of Jews, and participated in at least one of the massacres. Some Slovaks were aware of the 1941 Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre, in which 23,600 Jews, many of them deported from Hungary, were shot in western Ukraine. Defense minister Ferdinand Čatloš and General Jozef Turanec reported massacres in Zhytomyr to Tiso by February 1942. Both bishop Karol Kmeťko and papal Giuseppe Burzio confronted the president with reliable reports of the mass murder of Jewish civilians in the Ukraine. Slovak newspapers wrote many articles attempting to refute rumors that deported Jews were mistreated, pointing to general knowledge by mid-1942 that deported Jews were no longer alive. In mid-1941, the Germans demanded (per previous agreements) another 20,000 Slovak laborers to work in Germany. Slovakia refused to send gentile Slovaks and instead offered an equal number of Jewish workers, although it did not want to be burdened with their families. A letter sent on 15 October 1941 indicates that