1962: Gheorghe Arsenescu, Romanian partisan

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On this date in 1962, partisan Gheorghe Arsenescu was put to death at Bucharest’s Jilava Prison.

Arsenescu was a leader and co-founder of one of Romania’s several bands of anti-communist resistance units. Arsenescu’s Haiducii Muscelului — the Muscel Outlaws — were a band of 30 to 40 in the Carpathian fooothills who scarcely posed a serious threat to the Romanian state, but who nevertheless managed to elude capture for nine solid years in the 1950’s.

(More about the Haiducii in this Romanian pdf.)

Arsenescu was finally nabbed in 1960, a few months after his former comrades Toma and Petre Arnautoiu had themselves been executed. According to Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe, Arsenescu’s wife and father were also given long prison sentences for aiding him.

This band was perhaps most especially notable for one of its members who not only survived capture, but outlived the Communist regime: Elisabeta Rizea.

Crippled by torture, Rizea became a potent symbol in post-Communist Romania of the resistance of Arsenescu and others.

On this day..

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