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Like most Communists, she got around; her name popped up in Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Paris. She learned seven languages. In Paris, she met handsome Maurice Thorez, with whom her friendship was more than political. In 1933, together with fellow Communists George Gheorghiu-Dej and Constantin Doncea, Pauker organized the Bucharest railway strike which ended in bloody fighting between the barricaded workers and government troops.
Ana was arrested, escaped, arrested again. Premier George Tatarescu brought her to trial; Juliu Maniu, leader of the Peasant Party, helped her and publicly defended her right to free speech. She was sentenced to ten years in jail. There Ana, who had always hated sewing, became expert at embroidery, sold her own work and that of other women prisoners. During Spain's Civil War Ana, jailed in Bucharest, embroidered a scarf for La Pasionaria.
Homecoming. In 1940, the Rumanian government exchanged her for a Rumanian nationalist politician whom the Russians had taken prisoner in Bessarabia. Ana went to Moscow, where she found that her husband Marcel had got himself into Trotzkyite trouble; he was shot (according to one version) in a telephone booth. Some say that Ana gave evidence against him. Without flinching over Marcel's fate, Ana became a member of the Comintern Executive. She was one of the signatories of the protocol "dissolving" the Third International. One day at a meeting she attracted the attention of Andrei Vishinsky for her brisk delivery of a report. Vishinsky took her to see Stalin.
She organized Rumanian prisoners of war into the Red army's Tudor Vladimires-cu division—named for a fierce 19th Century Rumanian peasant leader who rebelled against the boyars. His outlook and literary style was much like that of a modern Communist. Sample: "No laws can prevent you from returning evil for evil. If a serpent crosses your path, hit it and kill it."
When Rumania was "liberated" by the Red army, Colonel Ana Pauker returned with her regiment to the country from whose squalor and jails she had risen. She proceeded to return evil for evil—and, in true Communist fashion, evil for good. Because she wanted to play along with his Liberal Party for a while, she left Tata-rescu, who had jailed her, in the Foreign Ministry for two years; but Maniu, who had helped her, she clapped into prison. Said she: "In his old age, Maniu has earned his rest." Maniu is now dying, still behind bars.
Friendship Week. Stalin's problem—and Ana's—was how to bind Rumania to Moscow by means more subtle and less costly than the Red army. Complicating factors were the anti-Communist and anti-Russian feelings, of the Rumanian people. One day in 1945 Ana Pauker's great & good friend Vishinsky flew to Bucharest. He insisted that Pietru Groza be made Premier.