pharmacists, engineers, and agricultural experts, whose professions had shortages). One thousand Jews were protected by presidential exemptions, mostly in addition to other exemptions. As well as the exempted Jews, around 2,500 were interned in labor camps, and a thousand were serving in the Sixth Labor Battalion. When the deportations were halted, the government knew the whereabouts of only 2,500 Jews without exemptions. Hiatus (1943) During 1943, enforcement of anti-Jewish laws lessened, and many Jews stopped wearing the yellow star. Nevertheless, the remaining Jews – even those with exemptions – lived in constant fear of deportation. The ÚŽ worked to improve conditions for laborers in the Slovak camps and to increase productivity, to strengthen the incentive to keep their workers in Slovakia. In 1943, the labor camps earned 39 million Ks for the Slovak State. The halt in deportations from Slovakia enabled the Working Group to launch the Europa Plan, an unsuccessful effort to bribe SS chief Heinrich Himmler to spare the surviving Jews under German occupation. It also smuggled aid to Jews in Poland, and helped Polish Jews escape to Hungary via Slovakia. In late April 1944 two Auschwitz escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, reached Slovakia. The Working Group sent their report to Hungary and Switzerland; it reached the Western Allies in July. After the Battle of Stalingrad and other reversals in the increasingly unpopular war in the east, Slovak politicians realized that a German defeat was likely. Some HSĽS politicians (especially those in the radical faction) blamed economic setbacks on the Jews and agitated for the deportation of the remaining population. On 7 February 1943, Mach announced at a rally in Ružomberok that the transports would soon resume. In early 1943, the Hlinka Guard and Department 14 prepared for the resumption of deportations: registering Jews, canceling economic exemptions, and hunting down Jews in hiding. A plan to dispatch four trains between 18 and 22 April was not implemented. In response to the threatened resumption, Slovak bishops issued a pastoral letter in Latin on 8 March condemning antisemitism and totalitarianism and defending the rights of all Jews. Germany put increasing pressure on the Slovak State to hand over its remaining Jews in 1943 and 1944, but Slovak politicians did not agree to resume the deportations. In late 1943, leading army officers and intelligentsia formed the Slovak National Council to plan an insurrection; the council united both Communist and democratic