Ana Pauker (1893–1960)

Ana Pauker was born Hannah Rabinsohn to an impoverished Jewish family in Romania. Her parents were Sarah and Hersh Kaufman Rabinsohn, a kosher butcher. As a young woman, she worked as a teacher in a Jewish primary school. In 1915, she joined the Romanian Workers’ Social Democratic Party and stayed with the pro-Bolshevik wing after the Russian Revolution. In 1921, she married Marcel Pauker, with whom she would have three children, and both of them joined the Romanian Communist Party after its split with the Social Democrats that year. After being arrested and brutally treated on several occasions in 1923 and 1924, Ana and Marcel Pauker went into exile in Prague, Berlin, and Paris. Ana was then admitted to the Lenin School in Moscow, which trained the top functionaries of the Comintern. She rose rapidly into the Comintern hierarchy, and spent the years 1930-1932 in Paris as a special instructor to the French Communist Party. Returning to Romania in 1934, she was arrested the following year, and after a highly publicized trial, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. While there, she learned that her husband had been one of the countless people "purged" by Stalin in Russia during the Great Terror of 1936–1939. The Romanian government traded Ana in a prisoner exchange with the Soviets in 1941. She remained steadfast in her commitment to the Comintern and led resistance against the Nazis in Romania during World War II. Returning to Bucharest in 1944, she became a member of the post-war government, and in 1947 was named Foreign Minister, the first woman in the world to hold this position. She remained for several years the country's behind-the-scenes leader, with positions in both the Party Secretariat and the Politburo. Although an orthodox Communist, she attempted to moderate many of Stalin’s policies, and defended peasants and Jews from forced collectivization and anti-Semitism. This led to her removal and arrest in 1953, though she was released after the death of Stalin a year later. She demanded to be reinstated as a party member, though without success.

Forced into retirement, Pauker worked as a translator from French and German for the Editura Politică publishing house.