 This information was also distributed to the neutral countries via German diplomatic channels and was reported on in the "New York Times" March 24, 1943, from Berne, Switzerland, along with the rather cynical statement that "the former death rate in the Jewish colonies of occupied Poland has shown a considerable decrease in the past three months," with the listed reason being that "now many of the male Jews are employed in army work near the fighting zones," receiving approximately the same rations as German soldiers.Regardless of these misleading reassurances, Bulgaria defended Jews with Bulgarian citizenship from Nazi deportation orders.Reluctant to comply with the German requests to deport non-Bulgarian Jews, in late 1942 and early 1943, the Bulgarian government utilized Swiss diplomatic channels to inquire whether it would be possible to deport these Jews to British-controlled Palestine by ships via the Black Sea rather than taking them to concentration camps by trains.