He was notorious for his failure to predict the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and Romania in mid 1941, thereafter finding his legitimacy openly challenged by Petre "Zidaru" Gheorghe and Teohari Georgescu; in the aftermath, he also refused to sponsor a partisan movement, and obstructed others from attempting to form one.

Foriș was only partly rehabilitated by Nicolae Ceaușescu as the new general secretary, with constant reference being made to his "grave mistakes"; as a sign of reconciliation, his remains were dug up and reburied in the Freedom Park necropolis.

[16] After Budapest fell to the Romanians, Foriș settled within the Kingdom of Romania (which had since also been united with Transylvania), entered the local Socialist Party (PS) in October 1919, and affirmed himself as a contributor to left-wing publications, beginning with Világosság ("The Light").

As he noted in 1940, the effort was undermined by "centrists", who managed to prevent most PS members from joining them, but was acknowledged by Elek Köblös and Aladar Berger of the PCR, who made Foriș their connection for the entire Transylvania.

[22] He eventually moved to Bucharest, the Romanian capital, in 1923, working as a junior accountant for a real estate magnate, Mihail Askenasy; he was also an editor for Munkás ("The Worker"), the PCR's Hungarian-language newspaper, alongside Dezideriu Lichtenstein.

[22] Foriș returned from jail as an accountant for another firm, Metalica, and signed up for trade union representing the interests of petty clerks, but quit his job for another editorial office, at N. D. Cocea's Facla.

[3][26] He was then caught up in the clampdown which began with Boris Stefanov's arrest in 1926, but, faced with a negligent prosecutor, was able to slip out of custody, and was promoted on the Central Committee secretariat during a clandestine meeting (November 1926).

[41] They appeared together before a new trial, this time in front of the Ilfov County tribunal; Ștefan was represented by lawyers Paul Moscovici and Petre Zisu, while Loti's defense was handled by Iosif Șraier.

[81] Faced with such complications and made aware that the PCR was failing to attract the Romanian workers, the Comintern asked for two high-level activists to be sent as party representatives in Moscow; as the first picks, Luca and Ștrul Zighelboim attempted to make their way across the Soviet–Romanian border in Bukovina.

[91] He also relied on Remus Koffler for collecting funds from regular members, as well as "from well-off intellectuals, entrepreneurial engineers, high-ranking functionaries"; examples of major sponsors include Emil Calmanovici, who also did bookkeeping for the party.

[90] During these events, Romania's FRN had crumbled, giving way to an Iron Guard government, called "National Legionary State", which proclaimed its alignment with Nazi Germany and the other Axis Powers.

"[95] From November 1941, Nicolae Petrea, Mihai Levente and Ion Vincze were tasked by the PCR with hampering the war effort in Transnistria, where they sold or donated food parcels stolen from the National Institute of Statistics.

[106]Political scientist and eyewitness Pavel Câmpeanu notes that Foriș was personally responsible for another debacle, also taking place in April 1942—namely, the Siguranța raid on the Union of Communist Youth, which disassembled Ilfov's organizational network, resulting in the arrest of activists Justin Georgescu (who died in custody) and "Zidaru" (who was executed later on).

The raid disturbed other communists, who suspected that the party central had been compromised by informants; Foriș denied their claims by issuing his own conspiracy theory, which nominated his accusers, including Petre Gheorghe's Jewish wife, as "Hitlerite" provocateurs.

[121] Though he owned a two-way radio, specifically provided to him as a means to contact Moscow, Foriș never used it,[122] allegedly prompting Georgi Dimitrov, of the Comintern's Research Institute 205, to angrily point out that "he had no idea what was going on there [in Romania]".

[126] Câmpeanu reports that Foriș's personal habits also eroded his legitimacy: The [Redlingher villa] on Iuliu Tetrat Street served two purposes: one was as a refuge, protecting him either from arrest or from being tailed by the Siguranța; the other was as a command center.

[127]In addition to losing party cadres in mass arrests, Foriș was purposefully alienating PCR veterans, removing them from positions of importance and pushing instead figures such as Carp and Petrea, both of whom were in their twenties, and the 30-years-old Nicu Tudor (who was a Siguranța informant).

[132] It formulated a standard narrative, depicting Foriș as either responsible for, or in any case satisfied by, the April 1941 clampdown, which had allowed him to "surround himself with worthless, docile, and suspicious elements"—the rhetoric targeted Koffler and Carp primarily.

[145] Having already sketched out his secret plan, Bodnăraș submitted to Foriș and Petrea one final time on 29 March 1944, when he appeared before them to discuss his inability to form resistance units; "Marius" proposed relieving him of his posting.

Unable to assess the situation due to the ongoing bombing raids, Foriș accepted at face value Bodnăraș's claims of Soviet endorsement, handed in his pistol and his personal papers, and replied back: Eu mă supun ("I submit").

"[166] In his defense of Gheorghiu-Dej, Apostol claims that Pauker and the "Muscovites" had secretly hoped for a Foriș–Luca–Pauker troika, which would have overseen Romania's full dismemberment—with Hungary annexing Transylvania, and Western Moldavia absorbed by the Moldavian SSR (see Greater Moldova).

[181] Răduică had no means of verifying their identities, but relied on Pintilie's vague recollections: "the second one [after Foriș] was some citizen from Timișoara area, whom people knew as 'the kraut', but whose real name he did not know, [...] as for the third one, as he put it, he had no way of recalling who that was.

[188] The latter affair aired some of the charges leveled against Foriș himself, which, historian Lavinia Betea notes, included trivial details—Foriș stood accused of courting his female subordinates, of humiliating comrades Răceanu and Rangheț, and of leaving important documents with Mircea Biji, whom the Siguranța had captured.

[191] The homegrown component is also highlighted in other sources, with historian Adrian Cioroianu and journalist Victor Frunză arguing that Foriș's dismissal marked a complete rupture in historical continuity between the PCR as established in 1921 and the post-1944 group.

[209] The rehabilitation was allowed some exposure in the cultural press, as with a May 1968 editorial by Radu Popescu, which thanked the party leadership for their restitution of justice, commenting that both Foriș and Pătrășcanu had endured "unimaginable torture" and "continuous infamy".

[216] Câmpeanu contrarily notes that Ceaușescu, as a Gheorghiu-Dej acolyte for his entire youth, never actually met Foriș, but only understood him as a cautionary example of weakness: Perhaps the core lesson that this passed on was one about the latent vulnerability of the a general secretary's position.

[219] Publishing his memoirs shortly after, Silviu Brucan, who had also participated in the Revolution, referred to Foriș as having been removed by a "coup de force", whereby Bodnăraș and Rangheț "pushed the illegal work along a dynamic line.

[1] As an unemployed graduate of the University of Iași's Faculty of Natural Science, Victoria worked as a courier for the Red Aid, before joining PCR defense teams for indicted party members.

[222] Among the charges brought against Foriș was his alleged attempt to seduce Constanța Crăciun, a prominent PCR activist who supported Gheorghiu-Dej; he was accused of having pressured her to become his mistress at the time when she was already in a relationship with Vincze, and of having thus caused her a nervous breakdown which had facilitated her capture by authorities.

"[127] Ladislau Redlingher, who had bunked with "Marius" in his father's villa during 1941, was told that his activity in the PCR underground would not be recognized by the party leadership: "he had not been involved, as he imagined, in protecting the general secretary, but rather Foriș the traitor".