Origins and early life According to his autobiography, which he wrote in early 1950, while held under arrest by the
Securitate secret police of
Communist Romania, he was born in
Bucharest in 1902. His father Isac, initially a merchant in
Galați, eventually owned a factory and several houses before losing his fortune in 1926, and died in 1941. A free spender, he amassed wealth during the
German occupation of Romania (1916-1918), by selling bulk quantities of
liqueurs to the temporary rulers. His mother (Ernestina
née Blatt) was a merchant's daughter and died in 1920. His father was an authoritarian figure whose arguments with his wife left a lasting impression on Koffler. Although the family was Jewish, Koffler was baptized, and attended a Catholic followed by a Lutheran school. After attending several grades at
Matei Basarab High School, he passed the baccalaureate exam at
Zürich in 1920. His interest in politics began in primary school; influenced by his father, he sided with the
Central Powers during World War I. Near the war's end, he became a
Zionist. In 1919, he read the
Communist Manifesto, followed by a work of
Leon Trotsky on the Bolshevik victory in the
Russian Revolution; the same year, when he reached Zürich, he declared himself a communist. In 1920, in Bucharest, he joined the
Socialist Party of Romania. Leaving to study in
Berlin, he attended communist meetings, took part in demonstrations and agitated on Soviet Russia's behalf.
Activity in Romania and late Weimar Germany Koffler married in the early 1920s; his daughter was born in 1925. The same year, at the insistence of his father, who soon went bankrupt, he returned to Romania without having graduated. In Bucharest, he met communist activist
Timotei Marin, whom he hid after the latter escaped a dragnet initiated in August 1926 by the
Siguranța secret police of the
Kingdom of Romania. This investigation also targeted
Pavel Tcacenco,
Boris Ștefanov and
Elek Köblös, all members of the banned
Communist Party of Romania (PCdR, later PCR). He also became acquainted with
Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu. Koffler ran a firm until 1927, when he departed for Germany yet again. By his own account, he embezzled significant sums while on the job, Between 1932 and 1935, he lived in a single room with his wife and daughter, sharing meals with his in-laws. The same room hosted communist meetings organized by Pătrășcanu. He was an occasional courier to Prague, where the PCdR's political office was located. He worked with members of the party secretariat,
Ana Pauker,
Nicolae Goldberger and
Șmil Marcovici. He belonged to the agitprop section then led by
Marcel Pauker. He was part of the editing committee of the clandestine gazette
Scînteia, to which he was a frequent contributor, along with Solomon Schein,
Ion Popescu-Puțuri and
Ștefan Voicu.
Financial involvement The seminal event within the PCdR during this period was the June 1935 arrest of three leading members: Ana Pauker, Marcovici and
Dimităr Ganev, denounced by a fourth, Ion Zelea Pîrgaru, with whom Koffler was in touch. The following year saw the arrest of Goldberger and of
Constantin Pîrvulescu, also contacts of Koffler's. In 1936, he set up the party's finance committee (CCF), with his role being to collect funds, and held this post until September 1944, when he was dismissed. The committee came into being as
Joseph Stalin lost interest in the Comintern and largely left the various communist parties to raise their own revenues, while at the same time, supply routes from Moscow to Bucharest were becoming ever more uncertain in the face of
Nazi Germany's rise and tightened security along the
Dniester River. It helped keep the party alive, funding safe houses, salaries, overhead, aid to several hundred prisoners and their families, lawyers and bribes for judges, policemen, prison wardens and guards. Nevertheless, the Comintern was critical of its involvement in business affairs, with
Wilhelm Pieck cautioning against bourgeois financiers influencing the party's policies. In 1941, he became the closest collaborator of party leader
Ștefan Foriș. In late 1942, he became involved with the communist-affiliated
Union of Patriots. In 1943, he helped launch
România Liberă newspaper. together with other former members of the CCF.
Stelian Tănase suggests four reasons why he ended up being executed. First, because he was the closest collaborator of Foriș, already killed in prison, and had thus been an accomplice of a man publicly accused of treason and collaboration with the Siguranța. Despite his relative obscurity, he was thus ensnared in the trial being prepared for Pătrășcanu, another rival of Gheorghiu-Dej's. Fourth, because Gheorghiu-Dej wanted revenge, personally ordering a harsh interrogation regime that, according to a witness speaking in 1967, included an officer pulling out over a third of his white hair during one session. Tortured, psychologically pressured and blackmailed, he suffered a heart attack. Once he returned to prison, he was severely beaten upon the orders of
Interior Minister Alexandru Drăghici, whose instructions came from Gheorghiu-Dej. Eventually, he began to appear insane, with some doctors believing he was dissimulating in order to avoid the need to incriminate other party members, while others thought he had truly become schizophrenic under torture. He retracted his earlier admission of guilt and steadfastly declared himself innocent, which pushed Gheorghiu-Dej to opt for his execution, as opposed to the case of
Bellu Zilber, who saved his life by cooperating. Koffler was tried for crimes against peace and high treason in April 1954. He was sentenced to death and, aged 52, shot in the back of the neck at 3 a.m. on the 17th, the same night Pătrășcanu was executed, at
Jilava Prison. ==Notes==