In the spring of 1944, after long months of apparent standstill, a new alarm was sounded for the surviving Jewish population in Slovakia. But the storm did not really break until September, when an ill-fated and perhaps premature "rising" prompted the Germans to assume control of the country, with the Jews as the major scapegoat. The initial alarm of a renewed deportation of Jews came from the World Jewish Congress in the United States. On January 29, 1944, it warned the apostolic delegate in Washington, DC, Archbishop Amleto Cicognani, that a census of Jews was being taken, with a view toward deportation. The Nuncio Rotta in neighboring Hungary issued a similar warning at that same time. As alarming as those reports were, they did not, in fact, signal an immediate deportation. The charge' Burzio reported that there was no immediate danger to the Jews, and subsequent events proved him right. On February 25, the Secretariat of State passed on to Burzio a warning by the United States that it would take into account the treatment accorded to the Jews in Slovakia, and that it would hold President Tiso and his collaborators responsible for any mistreatment. That same spring, two young Slovaks escaped from Auschwitz, bringing to their people the facts of the deportees' destiny. On May 22, the papal charge' Burzio sent to the Vatican the famous Auschwitz Protocol written by the two young escapees. However, that report did not reach the Vatican until October, due to the blockade of Vatican communications after the liberation of Rome in June, 1944.