Deported to Auschwitz
Among the first people to be deported to Auschwitz in May and June of 1944 was a group of Romanians whose fate is often identified with the tragedy of the Jews of Hungary. In the Arbitration of Vienna (August, 1940) the northern part of Transylvania (known as Siebenburgen, Ardeal or Erdely) had been transferred to Hungary, with dire consequences for the 150,000 Jews there. Following their deportation, Rabbi Safran, in a June 30 letter, informed the nuncio of their relatives. Other Jews in Bucharest expressed similar feelings to the nuncio and to the Vatican itself. Months later, on December 11, they reported that little information was yet available about the fate of the deportees. Some, it was said, had been exterminated at Auschwitz; others had been sent to labor camps. No one had been able to penetrate the cloud of mystery hovering over their destiny. Jewish leaders asked the Holy See to seek Berlin's permission to distribute packages of medicine and clothing, and as late as January 31, 1945, the president of the International Red Cross declared his organization's willingness to cooperate with the Holy See in aiding the Jews of Transylvania, who had been missing since mid-1944. As a result, the nuncio in Germany was instructed to explore ways of providing assistance.
The relationship of trust and confidence between Nuncio Cassulo and Chief Rabbi Safran is amply demonstrated by several communications. On May 25, 1945, the nuncio transmitted to his superiors two unqualified tributes. Rabbi Safran, he informed the Vatican, "has expressed to me several times ... his gratitude for what has been done for him and for the Jewish community. Now he has begged me to convey to the Holy Father his feelings of thankfulness for the generous aid granted to prisoners in concentration camps on the occasion of the Christmas festivities. At the same time, he told me he had written to Jerusalem, to the Chief Rabbi (Herzog), and also elsewhere, in America, to point out what the Nunciature has done for them in the time of the present difficulties."
Rabbi Herzog's February 28 letter to the nuncio contained these expressions: "The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundations of true civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of divine Providence in this world."
After the armistice of August 23, 1944, Rabbi Safran publicly reiterated the same sentiments which the intervening months had given no cause for him to revise. To the entire international Jewish community, on December 3, 1944, he declared: "My permanent contact with, and spiritual closeness to, His Excellency the Apostolic Nuncio, the Doyen of the Diplomatic Corps of Bucharest, were decisive for the fate of my poor community. In the house of this high prelate, before his good heart, I shed my burning tears as the distressed father of my community, which was hovering feverishly between life and death."