Romania's first people's court was set up in 1945 to prosecute war crimes but would also be used as a political instrument.
In Romania, the people's courts were first established in 1945 under Law no. 312 and their aim was to indict and punish those responsible for the disastrous state of the country and war crimes. Indeed, they carried out acts of justice in that many war criminals were put on trial and convicted.
Two such courts existed in Romania: one in the capital Bucharest and another in Cluj, for the crimes committed by Horthy's regime in Northern Transylvania. Some 2,700 people accused of war crimes were investigated, of whom 668 received various convictions. The People's Court in Bucharest sentenced 187 people, while that in Cluj convicted 481. The most famous case tried by the Bucharest People's Court was that of Ion Antonescu, who led the Romanian state between 1940 and 1944, alongside Mihai Antonescu, Piky Vasiliu and Gheorghe Alexianu, all of whom were sentenced to death on 17th May 1946 and executed. 19 other defendants were convicted to death in absentia, while the death sentences of three others were commuted to life sentence. The Antonescu regime was responsible for the deportation and death of around 280,000 Jews and 25,000 Roma in the camps of Transnistria. The People's Court in Cluj issued 100 death sentences, 163 life sentences and other long prison sentences. Those who made it until 1964 would benefit from a pardon issued by the authorities of the day.
The practice of people's courts also served an ideological purpose. The communist regime had pledged to carry out acts of justice and was using the circumstances of the war to also punish its adversaries. Traditional acts of justice began to be corrupted by forms of Soviet justice. This is referenced in 1999 by the priest Constantin Hodoroagă in his account for Radio Romania's Oral History Centre of his support for anticommunist fighters in the Argeș area. Hodoroagă observed that communist party groups used forms of class justice to fight against the old order:
"The communists began to organise themselves in Topolog Valley and fight against ordinary people and land owners. I remember a lawyer called Petrescu who would travel from village to village and hold some sort of people's court. He summoned the people in Şuici, where there used to be lots of land owners, and the likes of colonel Canarie and the well-known Minculescu family, including professor Minculescu, and put them all on trial in a kind of people's court."
In the artistic world, the people's court was also a way of dealing with personal grievances against adversaries in the early days of the Soviet occupation. The writer Pan Vizirescu recounted in 1997 how the artistic world itself had changed and how he himself narrowly escaped a sham trial in front of a people's court:
"I could see what was going on. Victor Eftimiu had taken over the leadership of the Romanian Writers' Union. He told everyone how he had sat down to dinner with Soviet officers and how they were so charming and had talked for a long time and everyone had been very friendly. And then he asked writers, myself included, to write an article explaining our stance during the war and hand it over in person. I realised it was a trap and I didn't go. But everyone else who went found themselves in a people's court."
The people's courts in Romania tried deeds incompatible with the idea of human dignity. The mass murders committed during WWII against the civilian population and ethnic groups meant these courts were invested with full powers to pass judgement on those who committed genocide.
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