detention in the Soviet Union, was shot in June 1946 for war crimes. On April 22, 1946, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej attended a meeting of Jewish organizations and called for the creation of a new body, the Jewish Democratic Committee, which was in reality a section of the Romanian Communist Party PCR. After the proclamation of the People's Republic of Romania on December 30, 1947, the government formed by the PCR outlawed all Jewish organizations at a meeting on June 10–June 11, 1948, stating that "the party must take a stand on every question concerning the Jews of Romania and fight vigorously against reactionary nationalist Jewish currents (that is, Zionism)". Between 1952 and 1953 the Stalinist antisemitic charges of "rootless cosmopolitanism" brought about the purging of the party's own leadership (including Jewish ex-premier and foreign minister Ana Pauker); the charges were then inflicted upon the larger part of the Jewish community, beginning with a trial engineered by Iosif Chișinevschi. Jews who were perceived as Zionists were given harsh labour sentences in communist prisons such as Pitești (where they were subject to torture and brainwashing experiments; a few of them died in detention). The 1952 trial of the engineers made responsible for the failure of the Danube-Black Sea Canal project also involved allegations of Zionism (notably aimed at Aurel Rozei-Rozenberg, who was eventually executed). During the Cold War, Romania was the only communist country not to break its diplomatic relations with Israel. Throughout the period of Communist rule, Romania allowed limited numbers of Jews to emigrate to Israel, in exchange for much-needed Israeli economic aid. By 1965, Israel was funding agricultural and industrial projects throughout Romania, and in exchange, Romania allowed a trickle of Jewish emigration to Israel. When Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power in 1965, he initially ended the trade in deference to the Eastern bloc's Arab allies. However, Romania was the only Warsaw Pact nation not to break diplomatic relations with Israel after the Six-Day War of 1967, and by 1969, Ceaușescu decided to exchange Jews for cash from Israel. He wanted economic independence from the Soviet Union, which was content to keep Romania a backwater and as nothing more than a supplier of raw materials, but to fund economic projects, he needed hard cash. As a result, from then until the Ceaușescu regime fell in 1989, about 1,500 Jews a year were granted exit visas to Israel in exchange for