The January 1941 Rebellion, when Romania's authoritarian leader Ion Antonescu was confronted by a violent rising of his Iron Guard partners, made Aderca a victim of the parallel Bucharest pogrom. Sebastian's "Journal" claims that Aderca was "almost comical in his naiveté": instead of hiding from the Guard's murderous rampage, Aderca had walked into a Guardist meeting house "in search of information", was kidnapped and beaten up, but released just as others in the makeshift prison were being killed. Barașeum opened, under new management, a month later.