power was marked by political persecution and the murder of opponents (such as the infamous brainwashing experiments conducted at Pitești prison in 1949–1952). Gheorghiu-Dej, who had as much to account for, used moments like these to ensure the survival of his policies in a post-Stalinist age. Later life In 1956, she was summoned for questioning by a high-level party commission, which insisted that she acknowledge her guilt. Again, she claimed she was innocent and demanded that she be reinstated as a party member, without success. During her forced retirement, Pauker was allowed to work as a translator from French and German for the Editura Politică publishing house. Death In the spring of 1959, Pauker was diagnosed with a terminal recurrence of cancer. She died on 3 June 1960 of cardiac arrest, after the cancer had spread to her heart and lungs. Analysis Ana Pauker was recast by Romania's leaders in the official party history as having been a staunch ultra-orthodox Stalinist, even though she had opposed or had attempted to moderate a number of Stalinist policies while she was in a leadership position. As the historian Robert Levy concluded: "No other communist leader save Tito has been shown to have resisted the Soviet-imposed line [during the Cominform period of "high Stalinism"] as she did—whether on collectivisation, the fight against the kulaks and the urban bourgeoise, the prosecution of Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, the purge of the Spanish Civil War and French Resistance veterans, the dimensions of the Five-Year Plan, the staging of a show trial of Romanian Zionists, or the facilitation of mass Jewish emigration". Legacy Ana Pauker's legacy in Romania today is still tainted by the attempt of ruling party propagandists in the 1950s and 1960s to scapegoat her as the leader responsible for the crimes of the early Communist period. For instance, she is often referred to in Romania as "Stalin with a skirt" (Stalin cu fustă). Film director Radu Gabrea, who completed a feature-length documentary on Pauker in 2016, suggests that this demonising of Pauker is only possible because Pauker was a woman and of Jewish origin, and that it reflects the widespread antisemitism in Romania. As historian Robert Levy put it: "Long the party's propagandists' scapegoat as the source of all the horrors of the Stalinist period, Ana Pauker continues to be vilified in post-communist Romania as the party leader most culpable for the post-war years' repression. But