Early life Born in
Calafat, Maria was the daughter of
Romanian Army officer Teodor Niculescu, who had fought in the
Romanian War of Independence, and his wife Angela (or Anghelina). Angela's sister had married Titică Orăscu, a member of the
boyar aristocracy. She married Gheorghe Cimbru, a
Police officer, with whom she had a son, also known as Gheorghe. The child was physically disabled by
poliomyelitis. Having divorced from Fueller in 1926 and married Antonescu, Romania's former
military attaché in France, she soon after moved to
Bucharest, where her new husband served as Secretary General of the
Defense Ministry. The two reportedly met and fell in love before her divorce was final. Their life as a couple was reportedly marked by Antonescu's rigidity and distaste for the public life. Reputedly, when she eventually did become politically important, the
upper class viewed her as rather a
parvenue. By then, although the officer spoke out against Carol II's extramarital affair with the commoner
Elena Lupescu, his own marriage to a divorcée was being treated with contempt by some commentators of the time. Nevertheless, at the very start of 1941, Maria Antonescu joined the board of
Regina Elisabeta Society, a welfare organization chaired by Queen Helen. She also took over a new state-run charity,
Sprijinul ("The Support"), which reputedly made her a contender in the conflict opposing her husband to the Guard, before the
Legionary Rebellion of early 1941 brought the Guard's downfall. According to
Spanish historian
Francisco Veiga, her humanitarian effort was endorsed by the more
conservative pro-Antonescu factions in reaction to Guardist projects such as
Ajutorul Legionar.
Sprijinul ensured participation from Veturia Goga. As a mark of emancipation after the 1941 Rebellion, Elvira Sima was formally purged, and accused (falsely) of having
embezzled charity funds. Its activities were promptly covered and advertised by the regime's official propaganda. It openly confiscated the patrimony of older welfare organizations, such as
Umanitatea, owner of the girls' colony in
Slănic. During the early months of 1941, the Iron Guard having been successfully repressed, Maria Antonescu and Veturia Goga coaxed support for the regime from the old establishment parties (although nominally outlawed since Carol II's rule, these were cautiously tolerated by Antonescu). Official newspapers publicized their visit to
Topoloveni, a former fief of the
National Peasants' Party (PNȚ), where they met with PNȚ leader
Ion Mihalache. The event was organized by Admiral
Dan Zaharia, who was simultaneously a PNȚ cadre and a friend of her husband's. Although she refrained from overt political statements, Maria Antonescu gave praise to Mihalache as a community and civil society leader. The pro-
Allied PNȚ leader,
Iuliu Maniu, saw in this an attempt by Antonescu to co-opt Mihalache as a minister. His immediate response was to dissuade Mihalache from "compromising himself" with such affiliations.
Antisemitic plunder and spoils of war (governor of
Transnistria),
Mihai Antonescu and
Nazi German diplomats, at the "Transnistria Exhibit" (1941 or 1942) With the continuation of war on the
Eastern Front, the Social Works Patronage Council took it upon itself to look after the needs of first-line soldiers and their families, as well as to protect a special category of vulnerable individuals: the
IOVR (invalids, orphans, widows). In November, after the
ghetto in
Chișinău was sacked and its population deported to Transnistria, the authorities set aside confiscated property for the Patronage Council, for the Red Cross, for Romanian hospitals and the Romanian Army. Such arbitrary confiscations inaugurated a chain of supply for the Patronage Council. In August 1942, the Jewish entrepreneurs
Max Auschnitt and
Franz von Neumann donated 50 million
Swiss francs to the same charity, a precautionary measure which may have played a part in the decision to indefinitely postpone transports from Romania to
Nazi extermination camps. This event was notably recounted in a testimony by
Ioan Mocsony-Stârcea, a member of King Michael's entourage. The same month, Jewish Affairs Commissioner
Radu Lecca, whose office implied regular
extortion of the Jewish community, collected 1.2 billion lei from the ghettos through the government-controlled
Central Jewish Office, of which 400 million were redirected toward Maria Antonescu's charities. The total sum passed by the Central Jewish Office toward the patronage Council exceeded 780 million lei. This type of abuse also touched other communities. Thus, among the special provisions ordered by Governor
Gheorghe Alexianu and affecting
Ukrainian peasants in Transnistria, one set produce quotas for Maria Antonescu's project, as hospital meals for wounded soldiers. Having herself reserved a special Blue Cross tax from cinema revenues nationally, Maria Antonescu also looked into financing a fleet of traveling cinemas. It was furnished with spoils of war from
Odessa Film Studio. Occasionally, however, Maria Antonescu intervened with her husband to alleviate some antisemitic measures. She is thus believed to have persuaded the
Conducător not to create a special ghetto in
Iași (where the survivors of the
1941 pogrom were supposed to be confined), in exchange for which local Jews provided the Patronage Council with 5 million lei. Reputedly, she and Veturia Goga also mediated between the
Conducător and
Petru Groza,
left-wing activist and leader of the clandestine
Ploughmen's Front, whose stance against the regime later made him the Antonescu regime's
political prisoner. It was also as a result of her intercession that Romania's
Chief Rabbi,
Alexandru Șafran, obtained the reversal of an order to
nationalize and desecrate Bucharest's Sevastopol Jewish Cemetery. However, Șafran also left an account of her unwillingness to provide water and milk for children and infants confined in
Cernăuți en route to Transnistria. Maria Antonescu is believed to have eventually heeded other calls, and to have pressured Ion Antonescu into allowing Jewish deportees from
Dorohoi to return home. According to one account, she had asked for protection from Queen Mother Helen who, as a noted adversary, refused to grant it. Maria Antonescu returned in April 1946, at the same time as her husband. She was submitted to interrogations by
Interior Ministry Secretary,
Romanian Communist Party member and public investigator
Avram Bunaciu, who recorded her views on Antonescu's political choices. While in
Bordușani,
Ialomița County, she met and befriended fellow women detainees from the
White Squadron. Another witness to her deportation was engineer Eugen Ionescu, who later escaped to
Australia. Ionescu later retold his conversations with the
Conducătors wife, specifically her complaint that Ion Antonescu had been refused trial by the
International Military Tribunal. She was by then afflicted with a debilitating heart condition, and, after petitioning the authorities, was briefly allowed to return to Bucharest for treatment in 1958 or 1959. Maria Antonescu was again in Bordușani from 1959 to 1964, when a turn for the worse saw her internment to a specialist clinic, and then at the
Colțea Hospital, where she was cared for by a friend doctor. She died there as the result of a third heart attack, and was buried in
Bellu cemetery, in a tomb owned by distant relatives. ==Legacy==