17 Facts About Alexandru Nicolschi

Alexandru Nicolschi subsequently worked for the telephone exchange in Chisinau.

Alexandru Nicolschi was sent undercover into Romania on May 26,1941, carrying papers with the name Vasile Stefanescu, in order to report on Romanian Army movements in preparation for Operation Barbarossa.

Alexandru Nicolschi was apprehended by Romanian border guards after just two hours.

Alexandru Nicolschi was sent to prison in Ploiesti, and then Aiud, where other Soviet spies, such as Vladimir Gribici and Afanasie Sisman, were held.

Alexandru Nicolschi was set free by the Red Army occupying Romania on August 28,1944, and benefited from a general amnesty.

Under the Petru Groza Communist-controlled government, Alexandru Nicolschi was appointed head of the Detective Corps.

Georgescu and Alexandru Nicolschi agreed to the deal, and allowed Iron Guard's affiliates to emerge from the underground, awarding them identity papers and employment on the condition that they disarmed themselves.

Georgescu was persuaded by Alexandru Nicolschi to let Petrascu go free; the minister later confessed that this was done on suspicion that the Iron Guard would otherwise provide support for the National Peasantist leaders: "The PNT's attempts, successful up to a certain extent, of attracting Legionaries into their party, [thus] giving them a legal possibility to act against the regime".

On Georgescu's orders, Alexandru Nicolschi drew up a list of Legionaries who had been imprisoned for lesser crimes under Ion Antonescu's regime, a document which formed the basis of pardons.

Alexandru Nicolschi was later assigned General Inspector of the traditional secret police, Siguranta Statului, where he and Serghei Nicolau led the will-to-be communist security force "Mobile Brigade", entrusted with silencing political opposition.

At the time, Alexandru Nicolschi himself rose to the rank of colonel in the MGB.

Alexandru Nicolschi played a role in the killing of Stefan Foris, who, after being toppled from his position as General Secretary, had been kept in seclusion; it was Nicolschi who ordered Foris' mother to be drowned in the Crisul Repede.

In early 1948, after the PCR forced King Michael I to abdicate, Alexandru Nicolschi escorted the latter out of the country and as far as Vienna.

Alexandru Nicolschi apparently rallied with Gheorghiu-Dej, and, despite the fact that he was still a Soviet citizen, he was decorated with the high distinction Steaua Republicii Populare Romane.

In 1961, after Gheorghiu-Dej began adopting anti-Soviet themes in his discourse, Alexandru Nicolschi, promoted to Lieutenant General, was sidelined and forced into retirement, without being denied the luxuries reserved for the nomenklatura.

Alexandru Nicolschi lived through the Nicolae Ceausescu years, and died in Bucharest, two years after the Romanian Revolution of 1989, as the result of a heart attack.

Alexandru Nicolschi concluded that "the numbers drawn from ethnic minorities, although disproportionate, do not appear to be excessive".