59 Facts About Radu Lecca

Radu D Lecca was a Romanian spy, journalist, civil servant and convicted war criminal.

Commissioner Radu Lecca was instrumental in negotiating the Final Solution's application in Romania, a plan which was eventually abandoned, while considering mass emigration to Palestine in exchange for payments.

Radu Lecca's sentence was commuted into life imprisonment and later reduced by the communist regime.

Radu Lecca was educated in Vienna and Paris, and, according to one eyewitness account, was "the perfect polyglot".

Radu Lecca was drafted into the Romanian Army in 1915, and, after Romania's entry into the war the following year, saw action on the local front.

Radu Lecca began frequenting senior Nazi Party figures, was a friend of Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, and soon after became a correspondent of the party newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter.

Around the same time, Sergiu Radu Lecca was involved with an Iron Guard splinter group, the Crusade of Romanianism.

Radu Lecca was therefore in permanent contact with the German Embassy in Bucharest.

Radu Lecca maneuvered alongside the German-endorsed political leader, General Ion Antonescu, subverting the Iron Guard's ministers.

Radu Lecca watched on as the Guard made preparations to oust Antonescu.

Radu Lecca accomplished his task, but did so with noted reluctance.

However, documents of the pogrom show that Iuniu Radu Lecca, who worked under Eugen Cristescu at the SSI, had a major role to play in plotting the series of murders.

In late 1941, Radu Lecca was assigned Jewish Affairs Commissioner and supervisor of the newly created Central Jewish Office.

Radu Lecca was in close contacts with both Richter and Killinger, establishing communication channels leading from Killinger to Conducator Antonescu and to the Romanian deputy leader, Mihai Antonescu.

Radu Lecca believed the Office could serve to postpone other pogroms, and that Hitler simply wanted to evict Jews into Nazi-occupied Poland and then to areas located outside Europe.

In October 1941, Antonescu asked Radu Lecca to look into the matter of deportations from Dorohoi County, and investigate complaints from the deportees' relatives.

Radu Lecca looked into the possibility of selective returns, but met resistance from Corneliu Calotescu, the Governor of Bukovina.

In practice, the CE was unable to earn the respect of most Romanian Jews, and Radu Lecca resorted to co-opting Federation activists, and even some committed Zionists, on the CE leadership board.

Radu Lecca was caught in the middle as Horst Bohme, who headed the RSHA branch in Bucharest, began investigating Killinger's bureaucratic work.

Radu Lecca alleged that both Killinger and the senior Schutzstaffel delegate, Richter, were alarmed by Bohme's scrutiny of their dealings with the CE.

Radu Lecca writes that Bohme accused both colleagues for leniency and incompetence, displaying such arrogance as to invite in speculation that he was mentally ill.

In one of his own RSHA reports, Bohme worried that Killinger had lost Antonescu's respect, and that, among Romanians, Radu Lecca was the only one still interested in what the German Ambassador had to say.

Radu Lecca produced the special decrees requiring all non-deported Jews to contribute special cash funds for social causes benefiting ethnic Romanians.

Radu Lecca informed that such blind severity defeated the economic purpose.

Radu Lecca therefore proposed that a grand total of 100 million lei be collected from more affluent members of the community, and go directly through the Central Jewish Office.

Radu Lecca was by then considering the demolition of synagogues left unused in areas subject to Jewish evictions.

Radu Lecca countersigned a plan to recycle the resulting debris, as materials for the Romanian Orthodox church in Bucecea.

Radu Lecca confirmed that both Ion and Mihai Antonescu had given approvals, and proceeded to instruct the Romanian Railways administration.

Contrarily, English researcher David Cesarani locates the problem with the RSHA, who "mishandled [Radu Lecca's] stay disastrously".

Radu Lecca talked about his plan in a face to face meeting with Chief Rabbi Alexandru Safran, on Hanukkah 1942.

The Chief Rabbi protested that his community could never have afforded such expenditures, but Radu Lecca replied that Antonescu was adamant and passionate about the project.

Radu Lecca was initially approached by Apostolic Nuncio Andrea Cassulo, who asked him to intervene and allow Jewish orphans in Transnistria safe passage.

At their first meeting in spring 1941, Radu Lecca reportedly agreed, but no further measure of this kind had been taken by September, when Cassulo decided to intervene directly with the Conducator.

In late 1942, Radu Lecca had begun negotiating with the smugglers and Zionists who organized the Aliyah Bet movement, and with Filderman, Benvenisti, etc.

Aliyah Bet from Romania was set to take place once Radu Lecca received 200,000 lei per emigrant.

Radu Lecca's reports generated German alarm, and a warning that those Jews caught in Bulgaria would be arrested on the spot.

Radu Lecca's supervision helped some influential civilian administrators and soldiers, who made fortunes trafficking their own dispensations from compulsory labor.

Radu Lecca stated that he himself collected money not just for Maria Antonescu, but for Mihai Antonescu and Killinger.

In July 1943, Radu Lecca suggested to postpone the planned confiscation of Iasi's Jewish Cemetery.

At around the same time, Sergiu Radu Lecca was in Lisbon, discussing a possible surrender to the Allies.

Radu Lecca took part in a government meeting presided upon by Antonescu: the Conducator instructed Lecca to collect funds and food for the deported Jews, whom he acknowledged were dying "at a fast rate", worrying about being perceived as the sole perpetrator of Romanian Holocaust crimes.

Radu Lecca received orders to collect his items from the Old Kingdom Jews, but soon after sent his records of the Antonescu meeting to his Nazi contacts.

In late 1944, soon after the August 23 Coup overthrew the Ion Antonescu regime, Radu Lecca was arrested by the new administration.

Unlike his colleagues, Radu Lecca was able to escape custody before this could take place.

Radu Lecca was apprehended by the Romanian Detective Corps only four days later.

Radu Lecca was repeatedly questioned by agents of the SMERSH, informing them about the Nazi network in Romania.

The status of the "Antonescu Clique", Radu Lecca included, was still being debated between the Allies.

Radu Lecca was a co-defendant in Antonescu's 1946 trial by the People's Tribunal, on counts of war crimes, crimes against the peace and treason, and sentenced to death on May 17.

In May 1948, some months after Romania had been declared a republic, Radu Lecca faced a new indictment, for violating restrictions on the trade of coinage metals and foreign currency.

Radu Lecca was found guilty of illegal income, for having stashed away such items, including 3,477 gold coins and a 12-kilogram gold bar.

Radu Lecca was fined a further 4,000 lei, and 2 years were nominally added to his prison sentence.

Radu Lecca was by then being held in the Jilava Prison, detained together with lawyer-politician Aurelian Bentoiu and literary critic Nicolae Steinhardt.

Radu Lecca's written statements were kept under key, in special files.

Romanian-born Israeli historian Jean Ancel presumes that the Securitate had vested interest in allowing Radu Lecca to produce a personal version of Romania's World War II history.

Radu Lecca was eventually transferred to Aiud Prison, c 1958.

Probably with Securitate instructions, Radu Lecca reportedly sought to repatriate his Swiss wealth; Schweizerische Volksbank is believed to have refused his request, motivating that the record of accounts had since been destroyed.

Radu Lecca alleged that Yannos Pandelis and Constantin Bursan, who represented the Zionist side in discussions about transfers to Palestine, were double agents of the United Kingdom and Germany.

Controversy erupted in 2003, when some of Radu Lecca's judgments were uncritically used as sources for a Romanian manual on Holocaust history.

In 1996, it reportedly accused the Swiss Bankers Association of intending to hide data concerning the money that Radu Lecca had extorted from Romania's Jews.