General Henri Cihoski (1871-1950)
The history of the Romanians was also written by foreigners, just as Romanians are present in the history of other nations.
Steliu Lambru, 15.02.2026, 14:00
The history of the Romanians was also written by foreigners, just as Romanians are present in the history of other nations. Although a numerically small minority, the Poles in Romania gave some important names to the country in which they lived. General Henri Cihoski, a hero of the First World War, was one of the Poles who gave a lot to Romania.
Together with the historian Corneliu Andonie, we briefly reconstructed Cihoski’s biography: “I would like to recall a quote from Nicolae Iorga: of all the foreigners this country has had, no one understood, forgave and loved us more than these idealists to the grave of the Polish revolutions. Henri Cihoski was of Polish origin. His father, Aleksandr, participated in the Polish revolution in Russia, the part of Poland occupied by the Russians, a revolution that took place in 1863. He was an engineer, a graduate of the University of Warsaw, a refugee in Romania, received with great joy by the ruler Alexandru Ioan I, who also granted him Romanian citizenship. He joined the Romanian administration, he was a determined engineer. He also married a Polish woman, Henri was the third of the five children of this Polish couple.”
Born in 1871 in Tecuci, Cihoski embraced a career in arms. He attended the military schools for artillery and engineer officers and the Higher War School in Bucharest. He was married to the daughter of a wealthy Armenian merchant and they had a daughter and a son: “Until the First World War, he obtained a whole series of military ranks, reaching the rank of colonel at the beginning of the war. He participated in the battles of the autumn and winter of 1916. He was seriously wounded in the spine and was hospitalized at the Saint Spyridon Hospital in Iași for a month and a half. When the campaign began in the summer of 1917, he was appointed to command the 10th Infantry Division. In this position he proved his remarkable qualities as an officer.”
After the Great War, Cihoski entered the world of politics. “He is important because, as Minister of War in the period 1928-1930 in the Iuliu Maniu government, he brought about a series of positive changes to the institution of the army. During his term, the name was changed from the Ministry of War to the Ministry of the Army in 1929. A new law on the organization of the army was drafted in 1930, voted after the end of his mandate. He is also important because, as an engineer officer, he took the initiative to create the Lion Monument, which is located opposite the Cotroceni Palace, at the entrance to the Militari neighborhood. He established several military sanatoriums, and improved others. He created the fourth regiment in the infantry divisions. Until then, and during the war, the infantry divisions had had three regiments.”
General Henri Cihoski came from a generation that preserved its principles and values in politics as well: “The event that consecrated him in the Romanian world was in 1930, when the unification of Bessarabia was celebrated in Parliament. The public in Parliament, upon the arrival in the hall of Constantin Stere, the Bessarabian who had always supported, until the unification of Bessarabia, Romania’s alignment with Germany and Austria-Hungary during the war, applauded him. That is why three of the outstanding generals of the First World War, General Petala, General Vasile Rudeanu and General Mărdărescu, left the hall as a sign of non-acceptance of those ovations given to Constantin Stere. And because Cihoski, as a minister, did not act in any way against them, he was harshly criticized. For which reason he resigned. It was a gesture of great honor and appreciation.”
The end of World War II did not bode well for Romania. An occupied country, it would not benefit from the reconstruction of democracy but would be thrown into the darkness of communist totalitarianism. A former dignitary, Henri Cihoski would share the fate of the other dignitaries. Corneliu Andonie: “On May 5, 1950, he was arrested as a former minister, taken directly to Sighet where, due to the conditions there and the fact that he was old, he was 79 years old, but after 11 days he died. He is not the only one in this situation among those who were killed in this way during the communist regime. And, according to the practice at that time, he was simply thrown into a mass grave.”
General Henri Cihoski was part of the generation of those who made Greater Romania and went through the two world wars of the 20th century. He was a witness to history in full, and a victim of its hardships. (CC)
