Grigore Gafencu

By FOIA Research

on December 16, 2018 - Last updated: December 23, 2020

Grigore Gafencu (1892-1957) was a Rumanian collaborationist foreign minister, who in early 1939 succeeded Nicolae Petrescu-Comnens in the Government of Cristea and retained this post also among several subsequent prime ministers. In the government Tătărescu he also held the office of press and propaganda minister, and later a post as Ambassador in Moscow, before embarking to Geneva with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. After the war, he settled in Paris, where he pledged for a free Romania during the Paris Peace Conference. In November 1947 he was sentenced by a Romanian court in absentia to a total sentence of 52 years imprisonment and was deprived of his Romanian citizenship. In 1948, he founded in the US with Nicolae Rădescu and other prominent exiles the “Comitetul Naţional Român” (Romanian National Committee), which considered itself a Romanian government in exile. He was also co-founder of the “Liga Românilor Liberi” (Free Romanian League) and a member of the “National Committee for a Free Europe” and participated in debates for “Radio Free Europe”.

“With the onset of the Second World War, these [Intermarium] politicians were bereft of their French, British, and Polish sponsors. Gowen named three prominent prewar Intermarium leaders: Vlatko (Vladimir) Macek (Croatian Peasant Party leader and Yugoslav Vice Premier), Miha Krek (Catholic Slovene Peoples Party leader and also Yugoslav Vice Premier), and Gregorij Gafencu (Romanian Foreign Minister 1938-1941).”1