Belu Zilber

Belu Zilber (born Herbert Zilber; October 14, 1901–February 1978) was a Romanian communist activist.

Born into a Jewish family in Târgu Frumos, Iași County, he adhered to the Bolshevik movement while still an adolescent. Because he participated in the typographers' demonstration of December 13, 1918, he was expelled from every educational institution in his native country by the authorities of the Kingdom of Romania. Arrested in Romania in December 1930, Zilber agreed to become an informant for the Siguranța secret police.

That year, he began working at an institute led by Virgil Madgearu, where he remained until 1947. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, the Communist Party was made legal and he became the closest collaborator of his friend Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, who was appointed Justice Minister. Zilber became a professor of political economy at the University of Bucharest and received a Ph.D. in philosophy. During that time, he married Nuțu Fuxman (Ana Naum). In the fall of 1945, Zilber entered in contact with Mark Ethridge, Zilber told Ethridge that the Romanian government, led by Petru Groza, was controlled by Moscow, and proposed a government led by Pătrășcanu. According to US Intelligence reports from that time, Zilber (a prominent Communist) became the advocate for a strong American resistance against the Soviet occupation of Romania, insistently urging the United States to support free trade, free elections, and a free press in Eastern Europe. and in the fall of that year he was forbidden from teaching at the university, on orders from the Education Minister, Ștefan Voitec. Zilber was arrested in February 1948, two months before Pătrășcanu. During interrogation, after being subjected for months to horrible torture, he gave in to Securitate pressures and confessed to the charges, He died in 1978. Following incineration at the Cenușa crematorium, his ashes were taken to Cișmigiu Gardens, where they were scattered under a bush near the bust of George Panu, among the magnolias he often admired. His memoirs appeared posthumously in 1997, some years after the 1989 fall of the regime.