The highest levels of the Slovak government were aware by late 1941 of mass murders of Jews in German-occupied territories. In July 1941, Wisliceny organized a visit by Slovak government officials to several camps run by Organization Schmelt, which imprisoned Jews in East Upper Silesia to employ them in forced labor on the Reichsautobahn. The visitors understood that Jews in the camps lived under conditions which would eventually cause their deaths. Slovak soldiers participated in the invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union; they brought word of the mass shootings of Jews, and participated in at least one of the massacres. Some Slovaks were aware of the 1941 Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre, in which 23,600 Jews, many of them deported from Hungary, were shot in western Ukraine. Defense minister Ferdinand Čatloš and General Jozef Turanec reported massacres in Zhytomyr to President Jozef Tiso by February 1942. Both bishop Karol Kmeťko and papal Giuseppe Burzio confronted the president with reliable reports of the mass murder of Jewish civilians in the Ukraine. In early 1942, Hanns Ludin, the German ambassador to Slovakia, reported the Slovaks were enthusiastic about the deportation of their Jewish population. Eventually, the Slovak government agreed to pay 500 Reichsmarks each for the deportation of two-thirds of their Jewish population.