Jailed F

Among Europe's numerous Jew baiters one of the most virulent and violent is 38-year-old Rumanian Iron Guard Leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Leader Codreanu not only despises Jews, he hates democracy, Russia and his country's Little Entente allies, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

Last week, in Bucharest, this champion hater faced a treason charge before a military tribunal of King Carol's officers. Charged with plotting to kidnap His Majesty and set up a Fascist state with himself as Fuehrer and Adolf Hitler as an ally, Leader Codreanu was found guilty, sentenced to ten years of hard labor. Balkan justice being what it is, Leader Codreanu was considered to have got off lightly. In the complex fabric of Balkan politics, however, the sentence did mean that King Carol was taking no nonsense from Nazis or Nazi friends.

A frank advocate of terrorism, tall, thin, shaggy-haired Codreanu has been implicated in many of Rumania's political assassinations in the last 15 years. His grandfather an immigrant Pole, his mother rumored to have been a German, Codreanu first acquired political importance by shooting dead Prefect Manciu of Jassy, Rumania's university town, who had arrested students for anti-Semitic outrages. Results for him: a trial, acquittal, increased popularity, formation of the secret terrorist society "The League of the Archangel Michael," forerunner of the Iron Guard and the All-for-the-Fatherland Party.

Big trial No. 2 for Codreanu followed the 1933 murder of Premier Ion Duca. Arrested as an accomplice, Codreanu denied any part in the assassination, but later, having been acquitted, bragged publicly that Iron Guard members had drawn lots to choose the assassin. Meanwhile, scores of students, policemen, professors, politicians became victims of Iron Guard terrorism. Last year one of his lieutenants, Jon Stelescu, left him, founded his own party, the Rumanian Crusaders. Shortly afterward, Apostate Stelescu was stabbed and shot to death. In a "heads-shall-roll" list discovered by Rumanian police, Stelescu's party had placed as No. 1, Jewish Magda Lupescu, the King's "favorite."

Terrorist Codreanu once envisioned an Italianate setup, with Carol as King and himself as Fuehrer. But his outspoken criticism of Mme Lupescu, alienated him from royal favor. Last April, when the great plot to dethrone Carol was revealed, 1,500 of his followers were arrested and M. Codreanu, with the little bag of Rumania's "sacred soil" that all Iron Guardsmen wore under their green shirts, went finally to jail.

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