of the party was either living in exile in the Soviet Union (forming the "Muscovite faction" of the party) or in prison either in Romania-proper or in Romanian-run labor camps in Transnistria (as the "prison faction"). Only three members of the communist leadership—Foriș, Pătrășcanu, and Koffler—were free, remaining active clandestinely, and constituting the "secretariat faction". Foriș, Koffler, and Victoria Sârbu, who was now both his secretary and lover, oversaw the small group from a secret location in Bucharest. One success registered by the PCR in late 1943 and early 1944 was in attracting funds from the Jewish industrialist Max Auschnitt. Reportedly, Foriș also sold off his mother's brickworks, setting aside funds for a bombing campaign that would have sabotaged Romania's war industry—the bombs were never assembled. In his attempt to organize such actions, Foriș relied on Petre Melinte, who, unbeknown to him, was a Siguranța man, responsible for turning in another saboteur, Francisc Panet. According to Răceanu, Foriș appeared impatient about forming a Romanian guerilla force, confident that the PCR could still count on popular support. When asked by Răceanu to form such units from the secretariat faction, Foriș reputedly lost his cool, arguing that such an initiative would end in the PCR's physical extermination. Other accounts also note that the general secretary was skeptical and inconsistent when it came to organizing both the bombing campaigns and any actual partisan units. This matter perplexed his comrade, Carp, who once asked Foriș to take notes from the Bulgarian and Yugoslav resistance movements. Foriș reportedly answered: "where would we even begin, can't you see we have no means at our disposal, that we are not in the same position as Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, with their tradition of fighting, that the Germans came [over to Romania] as allies". Carp's account is supported by Petrea. He reports that, in 1943, Foriș ordered his subordinates not to respond when a group of youths wanted to donate home-made bombs, which they hoped the communists would use against the Wehrmacht. Also according to Petrea, the "military commission" set up by Rangheț and Emil Bodnăraș in November 1941 had produced only "abstract" plans by September 1943, and was mostly concerned with organizing a communist takeover. As Petrea notes, Foriș and Sârbu were involved in analyzing its work, and insisted on noting its major flaws, including Bodnăraș's disregard for the PCR leadership and "other resistance groups created by the