Francisc Panet

Francisc Panet or Paneth (1907 – November 7, 1941) was a Romanian chemical engineer and communist activist executed by the pro-Nazi authorities during the Second World War.

In the early 1930s, he studied at the Deutsche Technische Hochschule in Brno, Czechoslovakia, where he met other two Romanian communist activists, Valter Roman and Gabriel Mureșan.

In 1941, after the Axis attack on the Soviet Union, Panet was part of a group tasked by the Romanian Communist Party to prepare explosive material for use in sabotage actions against German troops stationed in Romania.

The next day, after a two-hour-long summary trial by the Court Martial of the Military Command of Bucharest, the members of the Panet group were sentenced to death for membership in the Communist Party and for "subversive activity against the security of the state".

According to a sergeant who participated in the execution, quoted by Vasile Vaida (a cellmate), Francisc Panet began to sing "The Internationale" before being shot.