Ana Pauker (born Hannah Rabinsohn; 13 February 1893 – 3 June 1960) was a Romanian communist leader and served as the country's foreign minister in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ana Pauker became the world's first female foreign minister when entering office in December 1947. She was also the unofficial leader of the Romanian Communist Party immediately after World War II. Biography Early life and political career Pauker was born on 13 February 1893 into a poor, religious Orthodox Jewish family in Codăești, Vaslui County (in central Moldavia), the daughter of Sarah and (Tsvi-)Hersh Kaufman Rabinsohn. Her father was a traditional slaughterer and synagogue functionary, her mother a small-time food seller. They had four surviving children; two more died in infancy. As a young woman, she became a teacher in a Jewish elementary school in Bucharest. While her younger brother was a Zionist and remained religious, she opted for Socialism, joining the Social Democratic Party of Romania in 1915 and then its successor, the Socialist Party of Romania, in 1918. She was active in the pro-Bolshevik faction of the group, the one that took control after the Party's Congress of 8–12 May 1921 and joined the Comintern under the name of Socialist-Communist Party (future Communist Party of Romania). She and her husband, Marcel Pauker, became leading members. They were both arrested in 1923 and 1924 for their political activities and went into exile in Berlin, Paris, and Vienna in 1926 and 1927. In 1928, Ana Pauker moved to Moscow to enter the Comintern's International Lenin School, which trained the top functionaries of the Communist movement. There, she became closely associated with Dmitry Manuilsky, the Kremlin's foremost representative at the Comintern in the 1930s. Communist leadership position Ana Pauker went to France, where she became an instructor for the Comintern being also involved in the communist movement elsewhere in the Balkans. Upon returning to Romania in 1935, she was arrested and shot in both legs when she tried to flee. Ana Pauker was the chief defendant in a widely publicized trial with other leading communists and was sentenced to ten years in prison. In May 1941, the Romanian government sent her into exile to the Soviet Union in exchange for Ion Codreanu, a former member of Sfatul Țării (the parliament of Bessarabia that voted for union with Romania on 27 March 1918), who was detained by the Soviets after their