at the top of the party. The final decision was taken by Gheorghiu-Dej, Georgescu, Luca, and Pauker—interrogated as a deviationist in 1952, Georgescu claimed to have masterminded the plan. Apostol reports that Gheorghiu-Dej had originally wanted Foriș tried by a jury of his peers in the underground PCR; eventually: "I suppose that Dej was presented with a done deal when it comes to Foriș". Overall, he claims, "Dej had no decisive role in [his] killing." Levy credits Pauker's opposing account, which is that "Foriș's 1946 execution was carried out on orders of Dej and Bodnăraș, without the party Secretariat's knowledge or approval." He reports that accounts of Pauker's innocence are also provided by Pintilie's wife Ana Toma, as well as by Victoria Sârbu's sister Maria. According to later testimonies, Foriș was attacked by Pintilie and Pintilie's chauffeur, Dumitru Neciu (known to Georgescu as Petre Bulgaru, and to others as Mitea); Pintilie shattered his skull using a crowbar. The two conspirators buried Foriș in a nearby yard on Aleea Alexandru, Dorobanți, outside the building which came to house the Polish Embassy; they covered the hole with earth and debris. When her lover would not return home, Victoria Sârbu filed a missing persons complaint with the Romanian Police. Two of Foriș's collaborators were killed in the same manner during the following days, and buried on Aleea Alexandru, in similar circumstances. Răduică had no means of verifying their identities, but relied on Pintilie's vague recollections: "the second one [after Foriș] was some citizen from Timișoara area, whom people knew as 'the kraut', but whose real name he did not know, [...] as for the third one, as he put it, he had no way of recalling who that was." One of the two victims is now known to have been named Nicolae Pârgariu, also rendered as "Ion Zelea Pârgaru". The other was tentatively identified as Petre Melinte. As recounted by Răduică, "when asked by Gheorghiu-Dej what he had done with Foriș, Pintilie answered 'I have finished him off', his statement taken by Dej with a short silent break". Closely followed by the establishment of a Romanian communist state, this purge opened the road for further attacks on the members of the "secretariat faction"—beginning with arbitrary arrests of PCR members who were pressured to testify against Foriș. Gheorghiu-Dej and others in the new party leadership ensured that Koffler and Pătrășcanu were depicted as members