| Grigore Gafencu |
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Gafencu studied law and got his PhD in law at the Bucharest University . During World War I , he participated as a Lieutenant and received the Mihai Viteazul Order for courage in battle. After the war, he became a journalist and was the founder of the ''Timpul familiei'' newspaper which was translated in French was distributed in many countries. At the age of 32, he became a National Peasants' Party deputy in the Romanian Chamber Of Deputies (lower house of the Romanian Parliament) and was the assistant of the Minister Of Foreign Affairs during the Iuliu Maniu government of 1928. In 1938 , he became a Minister of Foreign Affairs. For the next two years, he tried to assure the neutrality of Romania , which was caught up between Germany and the Soviet Union . Due to his strives, he obtained the warranties of France and England , but which were not respected. After Northern Transylvania was annexed by Hungary as an effect of the Vienna Diktat and Bessarabia , Northern Bukovina and the Hertza Region were annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 , he was sent as an ambassador to Moscow . He returned to Romania after King Carol II named Ion Gigurtu foreign minister on 30 May 1940 and then left Romania to settle in Geneva , Switzerland . During World War II , he collaborated with the '' Journal De Genève '' and other newspapers across Europe. In 1944 his book ''The Preliminaries of the War in the East'' was published at the Eglef publishing house in Paris. After the war, he moved to Paris, where in 1946 he published the book "The Last Days of Europe", in which he describes his voyages across Europe in 1939 and 1940. In the preface he claimed that "the world made a war to kill influence zones and we must make a peace to kill them for a second time". In 1947 he was invited by the Yale University Press to the United States for a series of conferences and then he held lectures at the New York University . He began to form groups that would militate for a ''European Movement'', i.e. a federalization of the European states, in which to be also included Romania. He participated at the founding of the Free Europe Committee and he organized each Tuesday evening in his apartment on Park Avenue , New York City a series of meetings called ''Tuesday Panels'' in which were discussed the common events. He was a member of the National Romanian Committee (1949-1952) and was one of the founders of the Free Romanian League. |
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