After the end of World War II, Romania was one of four countries officially recognized as an "ally of Hitler's Germany" by the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947 (along with Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland). The peace treaty with Romania obliged the country to detain and bring to trial people accused of "war crimes and crimes against peace and humanity." The arrest and trial of the gendarmes and other repressive services of the Antonescu regime who committed crimes in the occupied territories (over 20,000 people in total) would have been justified from a moral and legal point of view. The trial of war criminals in Romania should be assessed based on the legal norms established by the International Tribunal that tried the main German war criminals in Nuremberg.

The prosecution of war criminals only started in the spring of 1945, when the pro-communist government of Petru Groza came to power in Romania. On April 12, 1945, Law No. 312 "On the Exposition and Punishment of Those Guilty of the Destruction of the Country and War Crimes" was adopted. On the basis of this law, I. Antonescu and other major Romanian war criminals were tried in May 1946.

The Bucharest Tribunal began on May 6, 1946. and until May 18, it was held in the courthouse of the 7th department on 108 Știrbei Voda Street, where the residence of the People's Tribunal was located.

The prosecution was represented by: V. Stoican - public prosecutor, head of the People's Tribunal; C. Dobrian - prosecutor general of the Timișoara Court of Appeal, delegated prosecutor; D. Seracu - public prosecutor of departments 1 and 7 of the People's Tribunal.

The Indictment cited the horrific facts of the most brutal terror unleashed by the Antonescu regime. This is evidenced by documents - transcripts of speeches and orders of I. Antonescu at meetings of the Council of Ministers. Already at the beginning of the war, bloody massacres were carried out in Iasi and Odessa, where thousands of civilians were shot. The territory between the Dniester and the Bug, occupied by Romanian troops, was also covered by terror. For example, telegram N5811 of July 18, 1941, sent to all prefects of the country and the commandant of the prison camp in Târgu Jiu, stated: "Mr. General Antonescu, the head of state, has ordered that all Jews in labor camps and war camps should be sent to hard labor. If anyone escapes, every tenth one should be shot." The guards in Vapniarca, Zhmerinca, Bogdanivca, Domanivca and other camps were particularly cruel. During the interrogations of the accused and in the statements of public prosecutors and witnesses, the question of the responsibility of the Antonescu regime for the deportation of a huge number of people was repeatedly raised. Mass deportations of the population, especially Jews, were a constant phenomenon in Romania and in the occupied territories.

According to part of p. 14 The decision of the People's Tribunal of Romania of May 17, 1946, on the conviction of I. Antonescu and members of his government, established: "The plunder of the Jewish population, organized by the Antonescu government during the fascist-Hitler period, was called "Romanianization". It was implemented according to a plan defined by a series of laws of a racist nature, the purpose of which was the exploitation of Jews to their impoverishment. From September 6, 1940 to December 6, 1942, 486,185 hectares of agricultural land, 90,625 real estate properties and 1,471 industrial complexes were expropriated from Jews." On May 17, 1946, at 7 p.m. in the presence of the accused, the chairman of the tribunal, O. Voytynovych, accompanied by six people's prosecutors, declared the tribunal session open and read the verdict. The following message was sent to the press on behalf of the tribunal: "In the name of the law, the People's Tribunal of Romania unanimously decided to sentence the ministers of the Antonescu government, war criminals and those responsible for the country's disasters, to the following punishments:

1. Ion Antonescu – sentenced to death;
2. Mihai Antonescu – sentenced to death;
3. Constantine Z. Vasiliu – sentenced to death;
4. Constantine Pantazi – sentenced to death;
5. Eugene Cristescu – sentenced to death;
6. Gheorghe Alexianu – sentenced to death;
7. Radu Lecca – sentenced to death.”

Then followed the names of the criminals who were absent but sentenced to death in absentia: Horia Sima, Constantin Papanaque, Corneliu Gheorgheescu, Mihailo Sturdza, Ion Protopopescu and Vasile Yasinca. The other 11 defendants were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment – ​​10, 15 and 20 years.

Only 4 Romanian war criminals were executed (Ion Antonescu, Mihai Antonescu, Constantin Z. Vasiliu and Gheorghe Alexianu), while hundreds more were sentenced to prison or forced labor.

The court also ruled to confiscate the property of all the convicts in favor of the state. All the convicts were given the right to petition King Michael for clemency. They exercised this right. But none of the convicts was pardoned by the king. And only on the eve of the execution of three of the seven sentenced to death – C. Pantasi, E. Cristescu and R. Lecque - the highest measure was replaced by life imprisonment.

Only a little over 200 Romanians were convicted in the first post-war trials conducted by the "People's Tribunals". The Bucharest Tribunal sentenced only 187 people. However, after the dissolution of the "People's Tribunals", there were more trials for war crimes and "crimes against peace". Romania was the only country in Eastern Europe that initiated only a small number of trials against accused war criminals.

Law No. 291 of 1947, on the basis of which these trials were conducted, excluded the death penalty. It provided for sentences ranging from 15 years to life imprisonment. Hundreds of high-ranking officials and officers were sentenced to life or long imprisonment, all who did not die in prison were released between 1958 and 1962. Unlike the post-war trials in Germany, the materials of the witnesses were not widely disseminated and were mostly closed to access. Many Romanians "considered the trials as an anti-national act, an attempt by foreigners and their assistants to take revenge on Romanians." The Romanian public does not want to know about the crimes committed by the Romanian army, police, and civil administration in the occupied territories of the USSR.

Pavlo Kozlenko,
Chairman of the Board of the Odessa Holocaust Research Center

List of sources.

1. Yu. Obidin. Bucharest Trial of I. Antonescu, 1946
2. P. Shornikov. Was the punishment of Romanian war criminals carried out?
3. Romania Yad Vashem. Electronic resource [https://www.yadvashem.org/ru/holocaust/lexicon/romania.html].
4. Klaus Kress, Robert Lawless, Oxford University Press, November 30, 2020, Necessity and Proportionality in International Law of Peace and Security, p. 450
5. United States, Department of State, 1968, Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States, 1776–1949: Multilateral, 1946–1949, p. 405
6. Lisbeth van de Grift, Lexington Books, 2012, Securing the Security of the Communist State: Reconstructing Coercive Institutions in the Soviet Zone of Germany and Romania, 1944–1948, pp. 111–112.
7. International Holocaust Commission in Romania, Tuvia Frieling, Polirom, 2005, Final Report, Vol. 1, p. 314