ANTONESCU, Ion (RK)
(1882 - 1946)
Maresal al Romania:
Born: 1882 in Pitesti, Romania
Executed: 1. Jun. 1946 by Romanian firing squad in Jilava, Romania.
Career:
Maresal al Romania, Romanian Head of State and Commander-in-Chief, Romanian Armed Forces (Dictator of Romania): Jan. 1941 - 1944
Prime Minister of Romania (appointed by Prince Michael; established a �National Legionary Government along with the leader of the Fascist and antisemitic Iron Guard, Horia Sima): 5. Sep. 1940 -
Minister of Defense in Romanian Government: 1937 - 1938
Romanian Military Attache in London:
Postwar Prosecution:
Arrested on orders of King Michael, 23. Aug. 1944. Sent to the Soviet Union, he was then returned to Romania and tried for war crimes. He was sentenced to death by firing squad.
Decorations & Awards:
Ritterkreuz des Eisernes Kreuzes: 8. Jun. 1941 as Maresal al Romania, Romanian Head of State and Commander-in-Chief, Romanian Armed Forces
1939 Eisernes Kreuz 1. Klasse
1939 Eisernes Kreuz 2. Klasse
Krimschild in Gold
Notes:
* During his time as military attache, London, married a French Jewish woman (later divorcing her). He had also had a Jewish stepmother.
* The following is excerpted from the website of the Simon Wiesenthal Center: �In his policy towards the Jews, Antonescu differentiated between Old Romania (the Regat, or pre-World War I Romania) and southern Transylvania on the one hand, and Bessarabia and northern Bukovina on the other. In a secret draft order, he prepared for a purge of Bessarabia and Bukovina: extermination of the Jews in the rural areas, and imprisonment of the urban Jews in concentration camps and ghettos. In the rest of Romania, he ordered the expulsion of 40,000 Jews from villages and towns to urban Jewish centers on June 19, 1941. He confiscated and nationalized Jewish property and imposed on the Jews a special levy of 4 billion lei (about $40 million). He did not, however, permit the 300,000 Jews of these areas to be handed over to the Germans or murdered. Late in the summer of 1941, Antonescu expelled 150,000 Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and the Dorohoi district, survivors of earlier massacres, to Transnistria. There, many of them were murdered or perished because of the terrible conditions. It was only late in 1943 that certain categories of Jews were permitted to go back to Romania. In the wake of an explosion on October 22, 1941 in the Romanian headquarters in Odessa, Antonescu ordered that for every Romanian or German officer killed, 200 persons were to be killed, and 100 for every Romanian or German enlisted man; 25,000 Odessa Jews were thus murdered.�
Although he had agreed to deport the Jews of his country to Belzec, Antonescu in the end withdrew his consent. Until the spring of 1942, he allowed the Zionist movement to operate, in order to solve the "Jewish question" by emigration of the Jews from Romania; this policy was defeated by German pressure, and by the British refusal to permit Jews from an enemy country to enter Palestine.�
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