Nicolae Ceaușescu

He met Elena Petrescu in 1940 and was immediately attracted to her. She too reciprocated his feelings but their relationship was interrupted by Ceaușescu's frequent stints in prison. The couple ultimately got married in 1946 and had three children. Elena would play a significant role in her husband’s political life and the two would remain deeply in love till the very end.

After the collapse of his regime, Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital with Emil Bobu and Manea Mănescu in a helicopter. But they were captured and tried before a kangaroo court convened on orders of the National Salvation Front, Romania's provisional government. Both Nicolae and Elena were sentenced to death and were executed by a gathering of soldiers on 25 December 1989.

Nicolae Ceaușescu was born on 26 January 1918 in the village of Scornicești, Olt County. His father, Andruță Ceaușescu was a farmer who also worked as a tailor in his spare time to supplement his income; he was also an abusive alcoholic. Nicolae was one of the ten children in his family.

He received his primary education from the village school where he studied until he was 11. Tired of his abusive father, he ran away from home and went to live with his sister.

As a teenager, he became an apprentice shoemaker in the workshop of Alexandru Săndulescu. His master was an active member in the Communist Party which was then illegal. Soon Ceaușescu too became involved in the activities of the Communist Party which he joined in 1932.

His involvement in the party’s activities increased manifold over the years and by the mid-1930s he had been arrested numerous times and had participated in missions in Bucharest, Craiova, Câmpulung, and Râmnicu Vâlcea.

By this time he was named "a dangerous Communist agitator" and "distributor of Communist and antifascist propaganda materials" and was convicted by the Brașov Tribunal to two years in prison, an additional six months for contempt of court, and one year of forced residence in Scornicești in 1936.

He was released in 1940 though he was arrested again and sentenced for "conspiracy against social order". After spending time in prisons at Jilava, and Văcărești, he was transferred to Târgu Jiu internment camp where he shared a cell with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, a well-known communist activist who took Nicolae Ceaușescu as his protégé.

He served as the secretary of the Union of Communist Youth in 1944–45 after the World War II.

In 1947, Gheorghiu-Dej and Prime Minister Petru Groza forced King Michael to abdicate, and Gheorghiu-Dej seized power in Romania. He appointed Ceaușescu as the head of the ministry of agriculture.