Weissmandel, Michael Dov

(1903–1956)

   Weissmandel was one of the leaders of the Working Group, a Jewish underground group in Slovakia. He strove tirelessly to find ways to rescue the Jews of Slovakia, as well as those in German-occupied Europe, from deportation to the death camps. Weissmandel was a proponent of the Europa Plan, which sought to ransom the Jews of Slovakia, and believed he had succeeded when deportations were halted in 1943 after Dieter Wisliceny, Adolf Eichmann’s deputy in charge of Jewish affairs in Slovakia, received a payment of between $40,000 and $50,000. Optimistic that he could raise money from Jews in the free world and thus ransom the rest of European Jewry, he proceeded to solicit the millions of dollars that were deemed necessary to save European Jewry. When deportations resumed in the fall of 1944, he blamed Jewish communities in the Allied countries for failing to raise the necessary $200,000 down payment toward the total sum of $2 million to $3 million demanded by Wisliceny.

   When two Jews from Slovakia, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, managed to escape from Auschwitz in April 1944, they reported to the Working Group on the operation of the death camps. Weissmandel subsequently, along with Gisi Fleischmann, a member of the Working Group, initiated an information campaign about the horrors of the death camp and called on the Allies to bomb Auschwitz, the camp, and the railway lines, bridges, and tunnels leading to the death camp. Following the resumption of deportations in the fall of 1944, Weissmandel and his family were sent to Auschwitz, but he managed to escape and eventually made his way to the United States, where he established a Talmudic academy.