Emil Calmanovici Emil Calmanovici ( March 1896 – March 12 , 1956 ) was a Romania n engineer , businessman , and communist militant . Known for the financial support he gave to the Romanian Communist Party ( PCR ) during the late 1930s and early 1940s , he became a political prisoner of the after being implicated in the show trial of his collaborator Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu . Calmanovici died in mysterious circumstances in Aiud prison , while on recovery from a hunger strike . Biography . Early life and financial success . Born to a Jewish family in Piatra Neamţ , he was the son of Mendel and his wife Ana , who ran a business in the town . A graduate of the University of Munich and the University of Berlin , where he was confronted with the establishment of the Nazi regime and became an avid reader of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin , he also amassed a fortune in his youth , owing to his real estate investments . Calmanovici decided to dedicate his wealth to the PCR cause , at a time when the party was outlawed . By the end of World War II , when they were nationalized , his properties included two construction enterprises , additional shares in a logging company centered in his native town , seven apartments , and over 18 , 000 m² in Bucharest real estate . Party financier . According to Calmanovici ' s statements , he had contributed massive sums to various PCR enterprises between 1937 ( the year when he joined the group ) and 1944 , being responsible for the purchase of a printing press , the renovation of the Central Committee seat in Bucharest , a clandestine radio station , and a kindergarten for children of party members . He estimated that his investments totaled 30 million lei in 1942 currency , which he argued was over 75 % of his total income . Calmanovici took pride in noting that this contribution was by far the highest of all those recorded ( including that of Jacques Berman ) . In addition , he contended , nationalization of his wealth had brought the state over 1 billion lei in 1947 currency . Inside the PCR , he kept only sporadic contacts with the " prison faction " , a group led by Gheorghe Gheorghiu - Dej ( according to one account , during the time when Gheorghiu - Dej was held in Doftana prison , Calmanovici sent him a jacket as a gift ) . Instead , he was close to Pătrășcanu ' s maverick group ( later known as the " Secretariat faction " ) , a fact which , in time , contributed to his arrest and imprisonment ( both of which were instigated by members of the " prison faction " ) . Late 1940s . During the war , when Romania joined the Axis Powers and participated in Operation Barbarossa , he was among those charged with establishing contacts between the Communists and other opposition groups . At the time , his relation with the pro - Allied financier Alexandru Ștefănescu helped him gain intimate knowledge of various negotiations between the National Peasants ' Party ( PNȚ ) and the National Liberal Party ( PNL ) on one side and Ion Antonescu ' s dictatorial government on the other , as well as of the latter ' s tentative moves to withdraw Romania from its alliance with Nazi Germany through a compromise with the Western Allies ( the 1943 unsuccessful mission of Barbu Ştirbey to Cairo ) . Calmanovici forwarded his information to the PCR ' s Remus Koffler , which helped the group approach and influence the PNȚ leader Iuliu Maniu to form an alliance against Antonescu ( one which enlisted support from the Soviet Union ) . After the fall of Antonescu ' s regime and the onset of Soviet occupation in August 1944 , when the PCR first entered government , Calmanovici became an esteemed party member and officially - endorsed industrialist . In the spring of 1945 , his Bucharest house served as a meeting place for PCR and pro - Communist forces who planned and succeeded in toppling Prime Minister Nicolae Rădescu ( after a series of street clashes , Rădescu was replaced with the Ploughmen ' s Front leader Petru Groza , whose cabinet was controlled by the PCR ) . Following this , he was appointed a technical director of the Bucharest Constructions Institute and was involved in enforcing Soviet standards and expertise . Arrest . Relations between Calmanovici and the PCR degenerated abruptly toward the end of the 1940s , and he was arrested by the Securitate on May 26 , 1951 . Several days earlier , Calmanovici had met with Constantin Pîrvulescu . At this meeting , Calmanovici asked Pîrvulescu to use his status as head of the Party Control Commission to grant him a decoration ( Calmanovici was stiffly refused , on the grounds that such self - promotion was unprecedented ) . Documents involving the 1943 - 1944 contacts between Calmanovici , Pătrășcanu , Koffler , and Maniu ( who was already imprisoned on such charges following the Tămădău Affair ) were interpreted as evidence that the former two had been spying for the Western Allies . In full , the accusation read : " as an agent of the English espionage services he forwarded information about the PCR , taking part in the criminal action to destroy the party and support the anti - Soviet war " . Calmanovici stated that , early on , authorities had presented him with the claim that he was kept in custody in order to aid in the process of compiling a history of the PCR . Starting in summer 1951 , he was subject to a series of Securitate interrogations , which concluded that he had not contributed to hostile activities and that he was able to support his case with " sufficient guarantees " . In December , Calmanovici , who had devoted his spare time to learning Russian , was supposed to be released from custody . Instead , his case was reviewed by a new group of Securitate officials , who obeyed Gheorghiu - Dej and alleged that the latter ' s rival , Minister of the Interior Teohari Georgescu , was not enforcing party doctrine ( Georgescu was to be himself ousted in 1952 ) . On orders from Alexandru Drăghici and Vladimir Mazuru , under the supervision of several Soviet envoys , Securitate cadres were to induce Calmanovici to confess having spied in Romania during and after the World War . The officer who had originally argued in favor of his release was criticized for having displayed " lack of vigilance " , and ordered to resume interrogation . In several appeals to the PCR leadership ( Gheorghiu - Dej , Pîrvulescu , Chivu Stoica , Emil Bodnăraş and others ) Calmanovici repeatedly stated his innocence and dismissed accusations that he was a bourgeois figure with insufficient political education . In another personal letter , he compared allegations of espionage with those made by Alexander Kerensky about Vladimir Lenin prior to the October Revolution in Russia . Confession and trial . In February 1953 , Calmanovici gave in to Securitate violence and presented operatives with a fabricated account , stating that he had been part of a network of spies presided over by Milton ( a name he came up with after recalling the 17th - century poet John Milton ) . His inquisitors soon rejected the story , and argued that it was additional proof of " provocation " on Calmanovici ' s part . Eventually , he agreed to sign his name to a confession drawn up by the PCR , in return for a promise that he was to be given at most a four - year sentence . It has been argued that the document endorsed by Calmanovici was directly inspired from the similar one handed over by Nikolai Bukharin during the 1938 Moscow Trial of the Twenty One . In its final form , it also incriminated Calmanovici of Zionism and spying in favor of the Western Allies ( the United States , or , alternatively , the United Kingdom ) . Consequently , Calmanovici was indicted in Pătrășcanu ' s 1954 trial , where , despite early promises , the court ultimately sentenced him to life imprisonment and forced labor . The sentence was given on counts of crime against peace and high treason . As Pătrășcanu and Koffler were being swiftly executed in Jilava , he and the other persons sentenced ( including , among others , Alexandru Ștefănescu , Petre Pandrea , Harry Brauner , Lena Constante , and Pătrășcanu ' s wife Elena ) were dispatched to the infamous Aiud prison , on their way to various facilities . Imprisonment and death . Calmanovici , who was kept in almost complete isolation , managed to contact other inmates , an infraction which was added to his criminal record . As a consequence , the Securitate decided to stage a set of circumstances which were to incriminate him further : in 1955 , Calmanovici was escorted out of Aiud and into a villa in Săftica , where he received a humane treatment while being interrogated by Vasile Posteucă . A guard was instructed to approach him and earn his confidence , to the point where Calmanovici trusted him with carrying out a message he had written on linens ; addressed to his former employees and meant to be forwarded to Jewish communists in the Western world , these exposed the fallacies and major irregularities of his trial . ( In similar appeals , Calmanovici had also meant to bring his case to the attention of the Cominform . ) After the guard handed the letters over to his superiors , Calmanovici was chained and moved back into Aiud . He decided to publicize his innocence by beginning a hunger strike , which eventually led physicians on duty to force - feed him . His diet at the time went against medical guidelines for people with malnutrition , and was the most likely cause of his death by gastrointestinal perforation — two prison staff members later attested that this was done on purpose , as a method of assassination . It has also been noted that Calmanovici ' s signed statement according to which he was abandoning the hunger strike and was accepting the treatment , extracted only hours before his death , was immediately communicated to higher authority ( unlike any other such statement of the time ) . Of his group , Calmanovici was the only one to die in custody ( all others were released ca . 1964 , when they benefited from an amnesty ) . Rehabilitation and legacy . Like all defendants in the Pătrășcanu trial , Calmanovici was rehabilitated in April 1968 by Nicolae Ceauşescu , following a change in policy which was meant to discredit his deceased predecessor Gheorghiu - Dej and the former Securitate chief Alexandru Drăghici . The new inquiry , overseen by Ion Popescu - Puţuri , found that Calmanovici had been the victim of systematic abuse . Among others , it was established that Calmanovici ' s arrest had been operated on the basis of Gheorghiu - Dej ' s personal views , that the charges had for long not been communicated to Calmanovici , that Soviet agents had openly intervened in interrogations , and that , like virtually all other defendants , he had been repeatedly beaten and otherwise tortured to ensure a forced confession . Calmanovici ' s son became a resident and later a citizen of Sweden , becoming known under the name Gad Calmgran . He worked as a journalist , and was a collaborator for the newspaper " Dagens Nyheter " .