Horia Sima

Horia Sima (July 3, 1907 – May 25, 1993) was a Romanian nationalist-fascist politician. After 1938, he was the second and last leader of the fascist-nationalist para-military movement known as the Iron Guard.

Sima was born near Făgăraș, in Transylvania (part of Austria-Hungary at the time). Between 1926 and 1932, Horia Sima was a student at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Bucharest. After this, he started to work as a local high-school teacher of logic and philosophy. In October 1927, he joined the newly formed Iron Guard and became responsible for the Banat area.

Sima became commander of the legion after the founder and leader of the Iron Guard, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, was imprisoned. Tension built following a series of assassinations of Iron Guard members, including Codreanu (who was killed in prison), in late November 1938. In early 1939, Sima was able to flee to Nazi Germany through Yugoslavia. In the summer of the same year, he was sent back in order to prepare and conduct the assassination of the Romanian Prime-Minister, Armand Călinescu, on September 21, 1939. On July 4, 1940, he joined the cabinet of Ion Gigurtu as Minister of Religion and Arts, alongside two other Iron Guard members, but he resigned four days later.

In September 1940, King Carol II abdicated and the Iron Guard entered a tense alliance with the general Ion Antonescu (the National Legionary State). At that point, Sima was able to return from exile as vice-premier in the government and commander of the Legionary National Socialist and para-military movement. The Romanian territorial cessions in the summer of 1940, secretly instrumented by his Nazi protectors, offered him the pretext for sparking a huge wave of xenophobic and antisemitic attitudes. As a member of the government, Sima initiated a series of brutal pogroms, assassinations and de-possessions among Jews and competing politicians.

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