How the trial of Ion Antonescu went, Romania’s most controversial personality. The marshal was executed, without respecting his last wish VIDEO

The trial of Ion Antonescu, leader of Romania in the period 1940-1944, began on May 7, 1946, with the Red Army present on Romanian territory and in full process of the rise of the communists supported by Moscow.

Ion Antonescu remains one of the most controversial personalities of our history. While some historians accuse him of having an anti-Semitic policy and of allying himself with Hitler, others say that the territorial reunification on the eastern border was largely due to him. Ion Antonescu was born on June 2, 1882 in Pitesti and died on June 1, 1946, in Jilava Penitentiary. General, then Marshal of the Romanian Army, President of the Council of Ministers, “leader” of the state, Ion Antonescu had a rapid ascent in the military hierarchy, becoming Chief of the General Staff, then Minister of National Defense.

During the Carlist regime, he fell into disgrace with the king. He reappears on the public stage in the context created by the territorial losses in the summer of 1940, appointed president of the Council of Ministers and invested with full powers.

After the abdication of King Carol II, he effectively took over the leadership of the state and formed a government alongside the Legionary Movement.

After the removal of the legionnaires, Antonescu established an authoritarian regime, and on June 22, 1941, Romania participated alongside Germany in the invasion of the Soviet Union, with the aim of liberating Bessarabia and northern Bucovina, lost as a result of the Vienna Dictatorship and the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. On the night of June 21 to 22, 1941, starting at midnight, General Antonescu mobilized the army and issued the legendary order: “Soldiers! I order you: Cross the Prut! Crush the enemy from the east and the north. Free our betrothed brothers from the red yoke of Bolshevism. Reunite the ancestral lineage of the Bessarabians and voivodeships of Bucovina to the body of the country”.

Meeting between Ion Antonescu and Adolf Hitler in Munich, 1941 PHOTO Profimedia

Accused of Hitlerism and fascism

Arrested on August 23, 1944 by order of King Mihai I, Ion Antonescu was taken and investigated in the Soviet Union, then he was brought back to the country in April 1946 and tried by the People’s Court.

In the August 23, 1944 issue file published by the National Council for the Study of Secret Archives, there is the statement of Anton Dumitrescu, aide to the commander of the Guard Battalion (1940-1944). He was the one who informed Ion Antonescu of his arrest. Here is how he recounts the events that marked the fate of Romania:
“The marshal, absorbed by the needs of the front and other troubles, came less and less to the king, so that on the night of August 22, in agreement with those around him and of course with the news of those in Cairo, it was decided that the arrest, therefore the break from the Germans on August 26, 1944 at the Palace in Bucharest.

Ion Antonescu, Queen Mother Elena and King Mihai Archive

I receive follow-up orders directly from the king, who keeps me in the house so I don’t take any more no contact with my family, who were inside the palace. The service adjutant was col. Ionescu Emilian – General Sănătescu, following the discussions in 2 with the king, decided to carry out the strike on the very day of August 23, 1944, until August 26, 1944, a lot can happen. Said and done. Sănătescu goes to the Presidency where he invites Marshal IA with the vice president of the Council of Ministers and several more important ministers in a small council at the Palace at 5:00 p.m.

In the meantime, he arrives at the king’s house, col. Dămăcianu, Chief of Staff at the Military Command of the Capital. He is immediately received by the king and after a few minutes, he leaves. He had told him what would follow”.

Ion Antonescu was accused of campaigning for “Hitlerism and fascism”, of establishing “the cruelest dictatorship regime known in the history of our country”, of inviting “the Hitlerite armies to enter the territory of the country” and decided to “join the Tripartite Pact”, then preparing the aggression “against the peoples of the Balkans and against the USSR”, after which he committed “the greatest crime in the history of the Romanian people, joining Hitler’s Germany to the aggression against the peoples of Soviet Russia, who wanted a peaceful collaboration with the Romanian people”putting the country at war with Great Britain and the United States of America.

Antonescu was also accused that for racial reasons he ordered the deportation of the Jewish population from Bucovina and Bessarabia, as well as part of the Old Kingdom, to Transnistria, where, for the most part, it was executed.

The relationship between Ion Antonescu and the Legionary Movement Archives

On May 17, 1946, the People’s Court sentenced him six times to the death penalty, twice to life imprisonment, three times to 20 years’ imprisonment, once to rigorous imprisonment for 20 years, and 14 times to civil degradation for 10 years, as if one of them, even the capital punishment, was not enough.

The last wish of Ion Antonescu “I will pray to be buried next to those who were my ancestors and guides”

Asked what his last wish is, Ion Antonescu declared:“I ask not to be tied by the hands or the eyes, when he will shoot me”.

Ion Antonescu was shot in the evening of June 1, 1946, at 6:03 p.m., in Jilava prison, one day before his 64th birthday. His body was cremated at the “Cenuşa” Cemetery.

Shortly before the execution, the marshal’s mother, Liţa Baranga, had requested the first prosecutor to hand over her son’s body,to bury him in the family vault, at the Iancu Nou cemetery”. In case of cremation, he had asked that the ashes be handed over to him. The same thing had been requested by the wife of General Constantin Vasiliu, Dr. Gabriela Paraschivescu-Vasiliu.

However, the old lady’s last wish was not fulfilled and neither was the marshal’s, who on May 17, 1946, in his last letter addressed to his wife, Ion Antonescu wrote:“I will pray to be buried next to those who were my ancestors and guides, at “Iancu Nou”. There I will be among those with whom in childhood I knew both the joys and the lacks”.

The fate of Maria, the marshal’s wife

.After the death of the marshal, an attempt was made to eliminate Maria from public life. The marshal’s wife was sent to Moscow to be tried, but as she was not of interest to the Soviets, she was released.

Maria Antonescu, photo from the grave at Bellu Cemetery

The communists, however, did not give up until they destroyed it. Back in the country, she was kept in the dungeons of the Ministry of the Interior, then at Malmaison prison where she was allowed to see her mother, in Văcărești, at the prison in Uranus street, in Jilava and, finally, at the women’s prison from Mislea. In 1950 she was tried and convicted of economic crimes, but without evidence.

Maria’s heart gave way to the third heart attack, although the doctors in the capital’s hospitals fought to keep her alive.