of the camps, and others were bribed to prevent the deportation of the Jews working in the camps, but many local commanders ignored their instructions to this effect. Sereď and Nováky were used as concentration centers and their workers targeted for deportation on the last trains of autumn 1942. Jews deported from Slovakia had to sign a declaration surrendering their remaining property to the ÚŽ. 2,500 Jews, out of the 18,945 legally present, were living in these three camps at the end of 1942. In March 1943, the Central Office for Jewish Labor Camps (Ústredná kancelária pre pracovné tábory Židov) was established in order to increase production in the labor camps. The Central Office also improved conditions in the camps by constructing new buildings and staging cultural activities for prisoners. Bribery of labor-camp guards continued, in order to ease life for the inmates. Appeals During the 1942 deportations a Department of Appeals, led by Tibor Kováč, was formed in order to ensure that exemptions from deportation would be honored. The department also helped Jews apply for exemptions. The workers in this department went to great lengths to save Jews; some were arrested and deported while attempting to obtain the release of Jews from detention centers. There is little information on how much success it had. Illegal resistance In summer 1941, several ÚŽ members dissatisfied with the Department of Special Affairs gathered around Gisi Fleischmann, who began holding meetings for the nascent resistance group in her office. In 1942, this group was eventually formalized into an underground organization known as the "Working Group". It was an alliance of the ideological factions in the UŽ, led by Fleischmann and the anti-Zionist Orthodox rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl. Other members included Oskar Neumann, assimilationist Tibor Kováč, Neolog rabbi Armin Frieder, and the apolitical architect Andrej Steiner. Israeli historian Livia Rothkirchen emphasizes that the members of the Working Group operated in dual capacities as resistance members and official representatives, coordinating legal and illegal activities, which makes it difficult to draw a distinction between the two groups' activities. She also notes that the successes of the Working Group were due in large part to the official standing of the ÚŽ. Censorship of correspondence and this newsletter intensified in early 1942 during the deportations, in order to prevent the ÚŽ from warning the Jewish population. After news of forthcoming deportations was leaked on 3 March 1942, many