Arrested soon after the August 1944 coup which overthrew her husband, Maria Antonescu was briefly a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union, and, after a period of uncertainty, tried and sentenced by the new communist regime on charges of economic crimes (embezzlement).

[4][7] Having divorced from Fueller in 1926 and married Antonescu, Romania's former military attaché in France, she soon after moved to Bucharest, where her new husband served as Secretary General of the Defense Ministry.

Assisted by his lawyer Mihai Antonescu, the future Conducător disproved the claim, and the perception that he was being persecuted by an authoritarian ruler reportedly earned him the public's respect.

[4][6][10] By then, although the officer spoke out against Carol II's extramarital affair with the commoner Elena Lupescu, his own marriage to a divorcée was being treated with contempt by some commentators of the time.

[4][6] In late 1940, as a result of a major social crisis, the National Legionary State was set up in Romania, and Carol relinquished the throne in favor of the junior king Michael I. Antonescu took over with dictatorial powers, as Conducător, and struck a partnership in government with the fascist Iron Guard.

According to Spanish historian Francisco Veiga, her humanitarian effort was endorsed by the more conservative pro-Antonescu factions in reaction to Guardist projects such as Ajutorul Legionar.

It specified that the council was "a State institution with its own juridical person and patrimony", whose members ex officio included government ministers and the Patriarch of All Romania; others were designated by Conducător decrees.

[22] With the continuation of war on the Eastern Front, the Social Works Patronage Council took it upon itself to look after the needs of first-line soldiers and their families, as well as to protect a special category of vulnerable individuals: the IOVR (invalids, orphans, widows).

In August 1942, the Jewish entrepreneurs Max Auschnitt and Franz von Neumann donated 50 million Swiss francs to the same charity, a precautionary measure which may have played a part in the decision to indefinitely postpone transports from Romania to Nazi extermination camps.

Thus, among the special provisions ordered by Governor Gheorghe Alexianu and affecting Ukrainian peasants in Transnistria, one set produce quotas for Maria Antonescu's project, as hospital meals for wounded soldiers.

She is thus believed to have persuaded the Conducător not to create a special ghetto in Iași (where the survivors of the 1941 pogrom were supposed to be confined), in exchange for which local Jews provided the Patronage Council with 5 million lei.

[32] It was also as a result of her intercession that Romania's Chief Rabbi, Alexandru Șafran, obtained the reversal of an order to nationalize and desecrate Bucharest's Sevastopol Jewish Cemetery.

[9] She is also credited with having collected medicine, food, clothing and window panes to be sent into Transnistria, and to have accepted Patronage Council donations in exchange for allowing other Jews to escape.

[9] The Antonescus' status changed dramatically after King Michael and opposition forces carried out the August 1944 Coup, arresting the Conducător and taking Romania out of its Axis alliance.

She was submitted to interrogations by Interior Ministry Secretary, Romanian Communist Party member and public investigator Avram Bunaciu, who recorded her views on Antonescu's political choices.

[3] According to conflicting accounts, she was simply allowed to go free,[35] or detained at Malmaison prison before her declining health made the authorities commit her to Nicolae Gh.

[3][35] After his People's Court trial and just prior to his June 1946 execution for war crimes, Ion Antonescu met his wife one final time, handing her his watch with the request that she imagine "it is my heart beating", and never let it stop.

[3][17][35] She was kept there under the rules of "in-secrecy" solitary confinement, and, according to the account of one of her fellow inmates, allowed to step out of her cell only at night, when she would collect and smoke the cigarette butts discarded by the guards.

Ionescu later retold his conversations with the Conducător's wife, specifically her complaint that Ion Antonescu had been refused trial by the International Military Tribunal.

[41] In 1941, after floods took a toll on Argeș County, the two founded Antonești, a model village in Corbeni (partly built by Ukrainian prisoners of war, and later passed into state property).

[3] Accounts of her life were provided by various public figures, including Princess Ileana (who met her shortly before leaving the country in 1947) and anti-communist members of the Romanian diaspora.

[43] During her husband's years in power, the official press made Maria Antonescu the object of reverence, prompting speculation that she was vying for popularity with Queen Helen.

[17] Her omnipresence in press reports alienated the public, and, in 1943, she acknowledged that the society, especially "the lower class", was becoming overexposed to her Blue Cross propaganda, and that "the workers are turning against the Patronage Council".

[17] According to Revista de Igienă Socială, Antonescu's Council was highly inefficient at targeting people in need, "especially so in the provinces", and its generous welfare program, that "promoted vice", ought to have been replaced with conditional cash transfers.

Unknown hands subverted the caption of a photograph showing her, Veturia Goga and Sanda Manuilă visiting a soldier's hospital, to read as if they were having intercourse with the wounded.

[35] The original was not preserved and did not reach Maria Antonescu, but its text was copied by Titus Stoica, the Conducător's attorney, a version which he hid inside an armchair just prior to being himself arrested by communist authorities.