51 Facts About Gheorghe Pintilie

Gheorghe Pintilie expressed his loyalty toward Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the jailed communist and emerging factional leader; their tight political camaraderie lasted into the late 1950s.

Under the newly formed communist regime, Bodnarenko was exclusively known as "Gheorghe Pintilie", being promoted directly to Lieutenant General, and serving in the Great National Assembly.

In 1959, Gheorghe Pintilie lost his Securitate offices and was assigned to lead the Militia, a more civilian-controlled component of the national police force.

Gheorghe Pintilie cooperated in the investigation, openly discussing some of his individual crimes, but was never questioned regarding his involvement in mass purges; the only repercussions he faced were political, leading to his expulsion from the PCR in 1968.

Historian Cristian Troncota suggests that the future Gheorghe Pintilie was born Jewish Ukrainian, while Securitate officer Nicolae Plesita describes him as a Bessarabian Jew.

Gheorghe Pintilie recounted then that, as a young man in the Komsomol, he would go after the kulaks, and was informed that priests were having meetings out in the steppe, in some pit-house.

Gheorghe Pintilie was moved to Vacaresti Prison, on the outskirts of Bucharest.

Gheorghe Pintilie was second in command for the FLP's Fifth Section, directly under Simion Bernachi.

From March 1945, Gheorghe Pintilie was assigned to the Siguranta, which Bodnaras had proceeded to communize.

From 1945 to August 1948, Gheorghe Pintilie was at the helm of the Central Committee's Political and Administrative Office.

Gheorghe Pintilie personally oversaw a money laundering system, which saw the Siguranta dumping gold on the black market, then transferring it toward the PCR.

Gheorghe Pintilie was seconded and succeeded at the PCR Office by Alexandru Draghici, who continued Gheorghe Pintilie's work in verifying the loyalties of PCR cadres.

Gheorghe Pintilie never took any initiative, since these would've looked like intrigues, on that level of his.

Gheorghe Pintilie himself reminisced that, in early 1945, Gheorghiu-Dej was visibly irritated by the charismatic PCR man Lucretiu Patrascanu, whom he called "that swine".

Also in 1946, Gheorghe Pintilie married Ana Grossman-Toma, noted for her wartime activities with the PCR underground; she had previously been married to Constantin Pirvulescu, and then to Sorin Toma.

Gheorghe Pintilie's main focus, Craciun contends, was on lying by omission, and on formulating sentences that could mean two things at the same time.

Documentarist Lucia Hossu Longin argues that, while still at the Siguranta, Gheorghe Pintilie was partly responsible for the Tamadau framing of July 1947, which saw the political destruction, and judicial repression, of Romania's leading opposition group, the National Peasants' Party.

Gheorghe Pintilie himself credited such notions, reporting that Soviet intrusion had come to be seen as a problem by Nicolau himself, who rebelled against his handlers.

Gheorghe Pintilie noted that Gheorghiu-Dej never followed up on Nicolau's reports; according to Pintilie, Nicolau was punished by the Soviets "in some way that remained between them".

At the time, Gheorghe Pintilie took personal pride in noting that most were working-class men, who "hadn't yet learned how to hold a pen with their hand".

Gheorghe Pintilie led this effort, suggesting that "ever-greater vigilance" was required when vetting new admissions, so that "class enemies will have no way of entering our ranks, or that they be discovered just in case they do".

From September 15,1949, Gheorghe Pintilie was a junior minister at Internal Affairs.

Gheorghe Pintilie had him demoted and sent to work as a foreman at Bicaz; Stanescu was released in 1953, and began his academic career as a philologist.

Accolades received by General Gheorghe Pintilie included Ordinul Muncii, First Class, in 1949.

In late May 1952, shortly before taking over as Interior Minister, Draghici deplored the ill-preparedness of Securitate officers, though noting that Gheorghe Pintilie, "sent to us from the outside", was a laudable exception.

In July 1952, after consulting with Nicolschi, Gheorghe Pintilie issued arrest warrants for 417,916 people ; over 130,000 of these were solely targeted for their membership in religious organizations, while 100,000 more were divided between the old regime's political parties.

Also in 1952, Gheorghe Pintilie reluctantly staged a round-up among the staff of the Canal labor camps, arresting eight leading figures of the dedicated Securitate branch.

Draghici had them pardoned within the year, and Gheorghe Pintilie added his weight, ordering that they be reinstated and granted an expense-free vacation.

Alongside Nicolschi, Avram Bunaciu, and others, Gheorghe Pintilie personally handled the one-week-long trial of Spiru Blanaru, who had assisted Uta in Teregova.

Gheorghe Pintilie implicated the Securitate in the more violent aspects of land collectivization, particularly after the Securitate and Militia were called upon to contain peasant revolts.

One of Gheorghe Pintilie and Nicolschi's main pursuits was a round-up and annihilation of a fascist underground movement, the Iron Guard.

From 1949, Gheorghe Pintilie had insisted on the need to infiltrate Guardist cells formed within Romania's prisons, asking Major Ion Nemes, and then Lieutenant Colonel Tudor Sepeanu, to oversee the operation on his behalf.

Gheorghe Pintilie took personal credit for the earliest, least violent, form of the experiment, which took place in Suceava.

Gheorghe Pintilie was not satisfied with the results, since the prison population there was too diverse, and not likely to respond identically to the stimuli.

Gheorghe Pintilie allowed the atrocities to take place by not providing Nemes and his team with any restrictive guidelines until early 1951.

Dulgheru reportedly confessed that Gheorghe Pintilie personally ensured that such a measure would not be effected.

Gheorghe Pintilie himself attempted to intervene on behalf on one victim, Emil Calmanovici, noting that Calmanovici had once spent "half of his own fortune" in subsidies for the communist underground.

The resolution was in practice ignored, with Gheorghe Pintilie asking Prosecutor General to send him 20,000 blank arrest warrants.

An attack on Gheorghe Pintilie's work was produced in 1955 by Apostol, who reported to Dej that Gheorghe Pintilie's recruitment drive among the workers was not an improvement: the people brought in "had no appetite for work even back when they were in the factories".

Gheorghe Pintilie is tentatively identified as "Comrade Penteleev", who, in March 1958, hosted in Bucharest a meeting of Eastern Bloc security services, which is only attested through a report made by Mircho Spasov.

Gheorghe Pintilie's attempt was blocked by Janos Fazekas, a Hungarian member of the PCR Central Committee.

From July 1,1958, Gheorghe Pintilie resumed his campaign against religious dissidence, this time by targeting the Union of Seventh-day Adventists.

In 1959, Gheorghe Pintilie was moved sideways from the Securitate, and assigned control of the Militia.

Gheorghe Pintilie was still a junior minister and active general until January 19,1963, when he was forced into retirement, collecting a special pension.

Gheorghe Pintilie then asked his loyalists, including Vasile Patilinet, to make sure that all those included on the list pledge themselves to the Romanian government, renouncing collaboration with the Soviets.

Nicolae Ceausescu, who joined Patilinet's commission, reported that Gheorghe Pintilie's spying was confirmed as a matter of public record, and that, despite the "hard times", the general continued seeing other Soviet agents, including Vasile Posteuca.

In confessing to the murder, Gheorghe Pintilie confirmed to the Forises that their patriarch was no longer alive, as they had never been explicitly informed that this was the case.

Gheorghe Pintilie spoke about his criminal past, and, though he justified himself through his perfect obedience to the party line, he admitted that some killings reflected his own "convictions".

Gheorghe Pintilie was buried with full honors at the Ghencea Military Cemetery.

Gheorghe Pintilie was survived by his two adoptive children: Radu, who died at some point in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and Ioana, who trained as an architect and settled in Israel.

Campeanu suggests that, like Georgescu, Gheorghe Pintilie was Dej's man within the "forces of repression", helping the Caransebes prison faction establish full control over Romania.