Ana Pauker (nee Hannah Rabinsohn/Rabinovici) ‘A Jewish Female Bukharin’
(b. 1893, Codàesti, County Vaslui, Moldavia – d. Bucharest, 1960)
Granddaughter of Rabbi Hersch Kaufmann Rabinsohn, communist activist prior to WWI, political prisoner, exile in the Soviet Union, NKVD operative/ spy, returnee, vice-president of the Council of Ministers, (1949-52), Foreign Minister (1947-53), Politburo Member responsible for the enforced collectivization of agriculture (1944-56)
Selected Quotations
On Interrogators:
You take a person, you arrest him, you call him an agent, you [subject him to] methods that, in all my life, with all the prisons and [interwar Romanian secret service] Siguranta stations, I'd never encountered...you throw mud at him, you jeer at him, you throw his kids out of their houses, you take his books, and you don't even say 'I'm sorry,' as any person would if he stepped on someone's foot.
BIOGRAPHY:
Born in a small Moldavian village (‘Shtetl’), the granddaughter and daughter of Orthodox Jewish rabbis, Hannah Rabinsohn -Ana Pauker by her married name - was a socialist activist before WWI. She joined the ranks of the Romanian Communist Party before WWII. She spent time in jail as a political prisoner before she was allowed emigrate to the Soviet Union, as part of a political horse trade between Marshall Antonescu and Joseph Stalin.
Interested in finding out more about the Blouse?
