Radio România Internațional

Tag: lawyer

  • Ana Pauker

    Ana Pauker

    Ana Pauker is one of the most conspicuous figureheads in the history of the communist regime in Romania. Ana Pauker played a crucial part in the team that instated the regime of the Communist Party in Romania, between 1947 and 1952. She was also a member of the Petru Groza government, the Communist Party’s first government in Romania. Ana Pauker also held positions in the Romanian Communist Party’s top-notch hierarchy, as well as in the hierarchy of then the Soviet Union’s Communist Party.

    Ana Pauker was born in the eastern Romanian county of Vaslui, in 1893. Her name was Hana Rabinsohn and she was born into a Jewish family: her grandfather was a rabbi. In France, in 1920, Hana met her future husband, Marcel Pauker, also a Jew. The Bucharest-born Marcel Pauker was a radical communist, and his wife Ana joined him in then the Comintern’s activities.

    Ana Pauker became a Soviet agent; she was arrested in 1922 and 1935. In 1941 she was released from prison and went to the then USSR. While still in prison, in 1938 Stalin had her husband executed on the grounds of Marcel Pauker’s being a Western spy. During the war, in Moscow, Ana Pauker was the head of the exiled Romanian group of communists, known as the Moscow faction.

    In 1994, Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre interviewed Ana Pauker’s son-in-law, Gheorghe Brătescu. He took the liberty to quote from a Soviet document, whereby his mother-in-law was appreciated for her qualities but also criticized for her inabilities:

    ”Her characterization, dated 1946, among other things, included the following: ‘among the RCP leaders, comrade Ana Pauker is the best prepared, theoretically, having a great influence among party members. That is why she is the one who, in fact and in all respects, leads the activity of the Romanian Communist Party’s Central Committee. She is very popular with the Romanian people as a result of her illegal communist activities of the past. Apart from her activity in the position of Central Committee Secretary, she heads the parliament’s communist group. She ensures the RCP’s collaboration with the other parties of the Democratic Bloc. She plays an active part in the activity of Women’s International Anti-Fascist Federation. Nevertheless, comrade Ana Pauker has a major weakness as an organizer. She does not use her influence hard enough, but also her authority, for the strengthening of the party ideologically and in terms of its organization’. “

    For Ana Pauker, the end of World War Two and the presence of the Soviet Army in Romania acted as a true launching pad, giving her access to then the political power’s top level. Ana Pauker was elected Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party’s Central Committee. After the forced abdication of King Mihai I on December 30, 1947, she was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs.

    The early 1950s meant her downfall. In 1952, then the communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej began the elimination of the competing groups. Ana Pauker was a member of such a group, which also included her comrade Vasile Luca. Charged with right-wing deviationism and sabotage, the members of the group were given a prison sentence. Lucretiu Patrascu, one of Gheorghiu Dej’s avowed opponents, was executed. In 1953, Ana Pauker received a home confinement sentence. In 1954, she was expelled from the Communist Party. She lived until 1960 and earned her keep working as a translator of French and German with the Political Publishing House, yet officially she did not have the right to sign her work. She was a member of the translators’ team that created the first complete Romanian-language edition of Marx and Engels’ works.

    After 1965, then the new leader Nicolae Ceaușescu tried to rehabilitate some of the victims of Dej. Gheorghe Brătescu said Ana Pauker was not among them. Gheorghe Bratescu gave us details about her life.

    ”Never ever has there been an attempt to do that. Moreover, she did her work at the Political Publishing House in quite abnormal circumstances. She didn’t even get her salary from there; it was sent to her through the cleaning woman. The latter dispatched the materials the former was supposed to write, and on that occasion, the salary was being sent to her.

    As long as Gheorghiu-Dej lived, she was considered the most dangerous person, especially after the killing of Patrascanu. Which explains why, as regards her political activity, it was not until 1968 since her political activity had been spoken of. Moreover, in 1961, one year after she died, all her decorations were withdrawn from her. In other words, even her memory was somehow rated as being dangerous, so there was no such thing as a possible attempt of recovering. “

    1953 and 1960, paying visits to Ana Pauker were several people, among whom lawyer Radu Olteanu, defender of the communists and anti-fascists in the 1930 trials. But Ana Pauker also had another visitor, a former inmate. With details on that, here is Gheorghe Brătescu once again.

    ” She had no problem paying a visit, she was someone who did time with Ana Pauker, her name was Maria Andreescu, she was known as the Little Old Woman. As far as we could see, she also maintained contact with some of the old acquaintances, friends, comrades, admirers of Ana Pauker. When Ana was admitted to the Colentina hospital, then Maria Sarbu came and paid her a visit. And at the funeral, perhaps spurred by this Little Old Woman, that treacherous, opportunistic old man Gheorghe Cristescu participated, he somehow represented the old socialist movement. “

    Ana Pauker was, just like many others, an individual bedazzled by the ideals of a perfect society which, in practice, translated into terror. And she left this world defeated by its harsh reality.

  • Adriana Georgescu

    Adriana Georgescu

    The beginning of communism in Romania and not only in Romania was marked by the cruel crackdown on those opposing the new regime. They included many young people who naively thought with the enthusiasm specific to their age that by protesting frankly and telling the truth the regime would be toppled. In 1945 one of them was Adriana Georgescu, a lawyer and journalist. Aged 25, she was the chief of staff of general Radescu, the last prime minister before the instatement of the Soviet-imposed regime, when she was arrested by the communists and tortured. After being abusively arrested, investigated and beaten by Alexandru Nicolschi, one of the fiercest communist torturers, who became a Securitate general, a mock trial followed in September 1945.



    Adriana Georgescu was sentenced to four years imprisonment for her involvement in the organization of young liberals which the new communist leaders labeled as terrorist. Granted amnesty by King Mihai in 1947, shortly before he stepped down, she was arrested again in the same year. However, she was “kidnapped by her liberal colleagues who helped her escape. Living as a fugitive in Bucharest for a while, on August 2nd 1948 she illegally fled the country with the help of Stefan Cosmovici, who was to become her husband and after taking refuge in Vienna, she settled in Paris. There, helped by the anti-communist writer and journalist Monica Lovinescu, she wrote her first book describing the horrors in the communist prisons.



    The book entitled “In the Beginning It Was the End first came out in French in Paris. Adriana Georgescu wrote that book to show the real face of the communist regime which the West did not know about, as it was concealed by propaganda and lies. In addition to the detailed description of the terrible days of detention and torture, Adriana Georgescu also made some portraits of high ranking communists as Lidia Bodea, general manager of Humanitas Publishers told us:



    Lidia Bodea: “Adriana Georgescus book contains many details and portraits: the portrait of the first Romanian communist prime minister Petru Groza, portraits of high-ranking communists like Emil Bodnaras and Ana Toma. She was a great writer with a journalists experience too. She used to write film reviews; before 1944 the State Security, the predecessor of Securitate, the communist political police, wanted to hand her over to the Gestapo because she had also attacked the Nazi ideology in the film propaganda. She started to write the book in Paris, shortly after she had fled Romania in 1948 and in 1950-1951, the book took shape. The book was translated into French by Monica Lovinescu. So, the book could be published for the first time in 1951, only a few years after its author had experienced the terror of the communist prison.



    One of the portraits made by Adriana Georgescu is that of Alexandru Nicolschi, her fiercest torturer, “the rat-man as the writer dubbed him. Lidia Bodea again: “At that time, Nicolschi was a young man. He was born in Tiraspol in 1915. So in 1945 he was 30; he had finished 8 grades. He was a communist coming from the USSR and first he was arrested as a Soviet agent. During the war, the Romanian authorities turned his sentence into a bearable one. He is the rat-man whom Adriana Georgescu describes as a beast. Nicolschi was a cruel torturer until his serene death. Just before his death, he said he knew what life in prison was like because he himself had been imprisoned. Securitate general Alexandru Nicolschi died peacefully in April 1992.



    The first Romanian edition of Adriana Georgescus book “In the Beginning It Was the End was brought out by Humanitas Publishers in 1991. In its foreword, Monica Lovinescu, the writer and journalist who opposed communism at the microphone of Radio Free Europe, highlighted the role of the Romanian dissidence in the first years after the war.



    Here is a quote from the preface read out by Lidia Bodea: “We suffer and we will further suffer for quite a while from our reputation of being the East European country with the weakest dissidence. Apart from a few exceptions, that is true for the last decades of the communist regime, but not for the first ones. After 1944, resistance in Romania was larger, more unitary and resolute than in the neighboring countries. And it was longer. In 1945 there was civil society but also the red army in a country under the Soviet influence. In 1989-1990, society, with the well-known remarkable exceptions, appeared neurotic, Adriana Georgescu would have said; in exchange, Europe was no longer divided and the red army was busy at home. In 1945, everything depended on foreigners, now everything is up to us. In principle, in the beginning, there is no way for end to be.



    Adriana Georgescu died in 2005 in Great Britain, where she had settled following her second marriage. Recently, Humanitas Publishers brought out the second edition of her book.

  • Adriana Georgescu

    Adriana Georgescu

    The beginning of communism in Romania and not only in Romania was marked by the cruel crackdown on those opposing the new regime. They included many young people who naively thought with the enthusiasm specific to their age that by protesting frankly and telling the truth the regime would be toppled. In 1945 one of them was Adriana Georgescu, a lawyer and journalist. Aged 25, she was the chief of staff of general Radescu, the last prime minister before the instatement of the Soviet-imposed regime, when she was arrested by the communists and tortured. After being abusively arrested, investigated and beaten by Alexandru Nicolschi, one of the fiercest communist torturers, who became a Securitate general, a mock trial followed in September 1945.



    Adriana Georgescu was sentenced to four years imprisonment for her involvement in the organization of young liberals which the new communist leaders labeled as terrorist. Granted amnesty by King Mihai in 1947, shortly before he stepped down, she was arrested again in the same year. However, she was “kidnapped by her liberal colleagues who helped her escape. Living as a fugitive in Bucharest for a while, on August 2nd 1948 she illegally fled the country with the help of Stefan Cosmovici, who was to become her husband and after taking refuge in Vienna, she settled in Paris. There, helped by the anti-communist writer and journalist Monica Lovinescu, she wrote her first book describing the horrors in the communist prisons.



    The book entitled “In the Beginning It Was the End first came out in French in Paris. Adriana Georgescu wrote that book to show the real face of the communist regime which the West did not know about, as it was concealed by propaganda and lies. In addition to the detailed description of the terrible days of detention and torture, Adriana Georgescu also made some portraits of high ranking communists as Lidia Bodea, general manager of Humanitas Publishers told us:



    Lidia Bodea: “Adriana Georgescus book contains many details and portraits: the portrait of the first Romanian communist prime minister Petru Groza, portraits of high-ranking communists like Emil Bodnaras and Ana Toma. She was a great writer with a journalists experience too. She used to write film reviews; before 1944 the State Security, the predecessor of Securitate, the communist political police, wanted to hand her over to the Gestapo because she had also attacked the Nazi ideology in the film propaganda. She started to write the book in Paris, shortly after she had fled Romania in 1948 and in 1950-1951, the book took shape. The book was translated into French by Monica Lovinescu. So, the book could be published for the first time in 1951, only a few years after its author had experienced the terror of the communist prison.



    One of the portraits made by Adriana Georgescu is that of Alexandru Nicolschi, her fiercest torturer, “the rat-man as the writer dubbed him. Lidia Bodea again: “At that time, Nicolschi was a young man. He was born in Tiraspol in 1915. So in 1945 he was 30; he had finished 8 grades. He was a communist coming from the USSR and first he was arrested as a Soviet agent. During the war, the Romanian authorities turned his sentence into a bearable one. He is the rat-man whom Adriana Georgescu describes as a beast. Nicolschi was a cruel torturer until his serene death. Just before his death, he said he knew what life in prison was like because he himself had been imprisoned. Securitate general Alexandru Nicolschi died peacefully in April 1992.



    The first Romanian edition of Adriana Georgescus book “In the Beginning It Was the End was brought out by Humanitas Publishers in 1991. In its foreword, Monica Lovinescu, the writer and journalist who opposed communism at the microphone of Radio Free Europe, highlighted the role of the Romanian dissidence in the first years after the war.



    Here is a quote from the preface read out by Lidia Bodea: “We suffer and we will further suffer for quite a while from our reputation of being the East European country with the weakest dissidence. Apart from a few exceptions, that is true for the last decades of the communist regime, but not for the first ones. After 1944, resistance in Romania was larger, more unitary and resolute than in the neighboring countries. And it was longer. In 1945 there was civil society but also the red army in a country under the Soviet influence. In 1989-1990, society, with the well-known remarkable exceptions, appeared neurotic, Adriana Georgescu would have said; in exchange, Europe was no longer divided and the red army was busy at home. In 1945, everything depended on foreigners, now everything is up to us. In principle, in the beginning, there is no way for end to be.



    Adriana Georgescu died in 2005 in Great Britain, where she had settled following her second marriage. Recently, Humanitas Publishers brought out the second edition of her book.