La Du Genaia

Radu Ghenea is a former ambassador of Romania’s wartime government who remains in Madrid after the war, protected from Romanian justice by Spanish friends. He later emigrates to Argentina under a false name and hosts the meeting at which the organizers of the Argentine European Reception Service sign its statutes, making his house one of the concrete points where individual refuge becomes an organized escape system.

Identity and Protection

During the war, Ghenea served as ambassador in Spain for the government of Ion Antonescu, the Romanian dictator whose state was a satellite of the Third Reich. Antonescu was tried and executed in Romania in June 1946 for a long list of crimes. Ghenea, by contrast, remained in Madrid after the war. The protection of his Spanish friends enabled him to evade Romanian justice and leave for Argentina under an assumed name.

His passage from Madrid to Argentina was not simply an individual flight. Ghenea was among the European fugitives received by Juan Perón at the Casa Rosada, and the narrative identifies him as the fourth visitor in the group. His presence there places him among the people whose wartime affiliations and postwar exposure made escape, rather than legal accountability, the pressing concern.

The Argentine Reception Network

Ghenea’s role in the network becomes especially visible on 28 June 1948. The members of the governing committee of the Argentine European Reception Service gathered at his house to sign the organization’s statutes. Pierre Daye, who designed the body, attended with René Lagrou as a representative of Belgian exiles; Ghenea represented the Romanians. Other participants represented fugitives from a range of countries, including Germany, Austria, France, Slovakia, Italy, and Croatia.

The meeting translated private connections into a formal mechanism for receiving and assisting newcomers. Soon afterward, the director general of Migration officially recognized the organization’s capacity to accept and manage applications for residence in Argentina. The archbishopric provided a building on Canning Street for its headquarters. The urgency surrounding the new premises—the machinery was already in motion—shows how quickly the network’s plans were converted into practical arrangements.

Narrative Significance

Ghenea’s home serves as a revealing contrast to his own earlier escape. He had relied on Spanish protection to avoid extradition and had reached Argentina under a false identity; in 1948, his house hosted representatives formalizing an organization intended to receive people like him. The chronology makes his private evasion part of a larger political infrastructure, rather than an isolated postwar disappearance.

The account also places this network against the book’s recurring concern with the gap between justice and political refuge. In Ghenea’s case, the former representative of a regime whose leader was tried and executed is himself protected from Romanian justice, then becomes a host to the organization that coordinates European fugitives’ reception. His story is brief, but the change in scale—from protected individual to meeting-place host—shows how escape could acquire institutions, official recognition, and a permanent address.