From Mihai to Ceausescu. About two weeks ago, I wrote here about King Mihai of Romania and his courage in standing up to Hitler and supporting the Allies. I ended the story with the arrest of Ion Antonescu and the suicide of the German ambassador to Romania. In another post, I told the story of the Jewish queen Magda Lupescu. She was the mistress of Mihai's father, Carol II, and it was she who recommended that Mihai remain in Romania.

Following the Germans' defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad, on August 23, 1944, King Mihai summoned Ion Antonescu to his palace and told him he was dismissing him as prime minister of Romania. He arrested him and tasked General Constantin Sănătescu with forming a government. Sănătescu was appointed prime minister, while other generals took charge of the war, education, and health portfolios. Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu asked for and received the Justice Ministry.

The Soviet Occupation of Bucharest

Immediately after the coup, negotiations with the Soviets began over a ceasefire. On August 31, the Red Army entered Bucharest and occupied it without a fight. On September 12, 1944, an armistice was signed with the Red Army, and Romanian forces began fighting German forces in Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech lands. The king was sure that simply joining the Russian side would earn him Transylvania from Hungary, and that is indeed what happened.

The Communist Party in Romania suddenly became popular, and began to reorganize. It accepted anyone who wanted to join. Its unofficial secretary was Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, an electrician who worked for the railway company. Anna Pauker, who had come from Moscow, was the daughter of a rabbi. She was born Anna Rabinsohn on December 13, 1893, in Codăești. She studied Hebrew and even taught it during a period when Jews were barred from most professions in Romania. Hatred of the Jews, the "foreigners," was at its peak. The family moved to the capital, and Anna, who had witnessed the persecution of Jews in Bucharest in 1906, was desperate to distance herself from anything Jewish, especially any outward Jewish sign. In 1915, Anna joined Romania's Social Democratic Workers' Party and began her political activity.

In November 1923, she was arrested for the first time for communist activity, and spent time in prison more than once. Marcel Pauker, who would later become her husband, was arrested alongside her. Until 1944, she was active in various communist organizations in Romania and across Europe, and spent a long period in the Soviet Union, where she was a key figure in the Comintern, the international communist organization founded by Lenin. Anna dismissed the coup. She argued that carrying out a coup alongside the king was a political mistake because it strengthened the monarchy. Gheorghiu-Dej was astonished by Anna Pauker's words. He emphasized that he had waited for the Soviet forces at the entrance to Bucharest with flowers in his arms, and had told them the city had been cleared of the last Germans.

This is what was written about him: "Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej would repeatedly explain to his comrades that without the coup of August 23, the Soviet forces would indeed have surrounded Bucharest, but the German and Romanian armies would have resisted, and the capital would have become the new Stalingrad. Who needed that siege? Soviet artillery would have bombarded and pounded the city, Katyusha rockets would have exploded over residential neighborhoods, and the city would have become a heap of ruins and corpses. Then the people would have greeted the Russians with curses, as enemies and murderers, instead of welcoming them with flowers as their new allies." Anna Pauker's accusations seemed to him to have been made up out of whole cloth.

But Anna Pauker's claims were intended to oust Gheorghiu-Dej and make her party secretary. Now the struggle was over who would lead Romania under the communist-Soviet power headed by Stalin.

Stalin, who knew Anna Pauker, decided to summon Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej to sound him out and decide whom to support as Romania's next leader. Stalin introduced the Romanian leader to Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Molotov, who supported Anna Pauker as party leader. Stalin lowered his voice and looked at Gheorghiu-Dej. Gheorghiu-Dej later said he felt as if he were facing a military prosecutor in a treason trial. Stalin said: "We're among friends, and I want to know how you would solve the problem. What do you think is the most important role in our party?" Gheorghiu-Dej replied: "We must fight alongside the Soviets against the Germans, all the way to Berlin if necessary. On the other hand, we must look after the population, because otherwise we won't be able to hold out."

Gheorghiu-Dej went on to write: "I studied Stalin's face and saw that he agreed with me. At that point, Prime Minister Molotov intervened and said that he had just spoken on the phone with Anna Pauker, who had told him that her slogan was 'Everything for the front.' 'Of course,' Stalin replied, 'but we have to look after the population, not just the soldiers. The Romanian comrade here has stated his plan correctly, and that is what we will do.'"

Gheorghiu-Dej said that there was a long silence among the three men in the room. Then Stalin turned to Molotov: "My dear Mikhailovich, Anna Pauker is a good comrade, she can be trusted, but she is Jewish and of bourgeois origin, too. The party in Romania needs a leader who has come from the ranks of the working class, a true Romanian through and through." Stalin came up to me, extended his hand, and said: "I have decided. I wish you success, Comrade General Secretary."

Stalin's antisemitism kept Anna Pauker from power. Nevertheless, in 1946 she was elected to parliament, and the following year she was appointed foreign minister, a position she held until 1952. She was called "Romania's Iron Woman," and in 1948 Time magazine described her as the most powerful woman in the world. Pauker was implicated in many affairs, including rumors that she had turned her husband over to Stalin's interrogators. She admitted several antisemitic and lawless members of the Iron Guard into the Communist Party, and also refused to dispossess the peasants of the little property they had. Pauker did everything she could to make it easier for Jews to emigrate from Romania. About half of Romania's Jews - 353,000 people - survived the horrors of the Second World War. The wave of immigration to Israel began in March 1948 and continued until April 1952. Among those who left was her father, Rabbi Zvi Rabinsohn, who immigrated to Israel. Immigration to Israel did not resume until six years later, in exchange for enormous sums of money.

Then Came the Bad Years...

Then came the bad years... On January 13, 1953, an announcement was made in Moscow that nine Jewish doctors suspected of trying to poison Stalin would be put on trial. Gheorghiu-Dej had not forgotten Anna's disdain for his coup and bore her a deep grudge. The day after the "Doctors' Plot" was exposed in Moscow, the Romanian Communist Party held a meeting at which Gheorghiu-Dej announced that the case of the gang of Jewish doctors in the Soviet Union should be put on the agenda. The meeting discussed the problem of minorities and the group around Anna Pauker, as well as the Zionist movement. One participant, Petre Borilă, argued that Anna Pauker should not be in the government. Another participant, Miron Constantinescu, said that just as there should be no mercy for priests, there should also be no mercy for rabbis, cantors, and religious teachers such as Anna Pauker's brother. Borilă added that Anna Pauker had received Israel's representative, detainees had been released by Teohari Georgescu, and Anna Pauker had issued them passports to Israel wholesale - all of this provided much food for thought. Iosif Chișinevschi also added fuel to the fire, and Gheorghiu-Dej expressed concern that despite the mass departure there were still about 300,000 Jews in Romania, more than in Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria. On February 18, 1953, Gheorghiu-Dej ordered Anna Pauker's imprisonment on charges of having ties with foreign agencies, promoting Legionary elements, and delaying collectivization. On the same day, her brother, the Israeli Solomon Zalman Rabinsohn, was also arrested. Her associates from the Moscow group were removed from their posts, interrogated, and imprisoned. At the same time, the arrest and trial of people suspected of Zionism began.

At one of the meetings, Gheorghiu-Dej said, among other things, of the Zionist detainees: "They all deserve to be shot, but there are too many of them, and it could look like a massacre, so we'll have to give them prison sentences, with a few exceptions - two or three who will be sentenced to death."

In April 1953, about a month and a half after Stalin's death, Anna was released from prison following the intervention of Vyacheslav Molotov and placed under house arrest.

One summer day in 1956, shortly before her death, Anna Pauker, who was by then completely ostracized, went to the Bucharest Opera. The hall was full of her friends and former colleagues who had somehow survived until then. She spoke to no one. After the performance, as she was about to leave the building, they lined up in two rows in her honor and stood quietly, almost at attention. Pauker walked past them without saying a word.

In 1947, about three years after the Communists came to power in Romania, King Mihai abdicated and moved to Switzerland. Over the years, he worked there as a farmer, a pilot, and even a stockbroker. During the communist era, he was forbidden to enter Romania, but in 1992 he was finally allowed to visit. Mihai died in December 2017.

Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej died in 1965 at the age of 64. His successor was Nicolae Ceausescu, who, together with his wife Elena, completely destroyed the communist regime. Ceausescu was executed in 1989 at the age of 71.

Silviu Brucan was 74 at the time and was one of the organizers of the uprising against Ceausescu.