[2] Of lowly origins, the largely self-educated Gheorghe spent the 1930s as a political agitator and organizer of social protest movements, for which he served several terms in prison.

Following the end of World War II, with the emergence and consolidation of a communist regime, the dominant "prison faction" cited Gheorghe's case as evidence of betrayal by the Bucharest party cell.

After graduating four primary classes in a private Bulgarian school in his hometown, at the age of 10, Petre started to work as a newspaper hawker.

[4] In 1927, he also joined the Dobrujan Revolutionary Organization (DRO), a Bulgarian insurgent group, and two years later he became a member of its Caliacra County committee.

[6] Conscripted in 1929, Gheorghe served his military stage at the Railroads Regiment in Iași, where he continued his propaganda work, which resulted in his being ordered to the disciplinary barracks on numerous occasions.

[7] After his return to Bazargic in 1930, he carried on with his political activity, a member of county committee of the Union of Communist Youth and an editor of the local Dobrujan newspaper Tânărul Bolşevic ("Young Bolshevik").

[9] The whole operation was being followed by Siguranța, the secret police, which proceeded to arrest Petre Gheorghe and his colleague, a Bogdan Vasilef Pavloff.

[10] After he was released from the penitentiary in Constanța, Gheorghe moved back to Iași, tasked with putting out an illegal printing press and the newspaper Tânărul Muncitor ("Young Worker").

[12] For the next two years, Gheorghe was able to evade Siguranța and create anti-fascist committees in Grivița's CFR Workshops, as well as in Voina şi Lemaître factories.

[13] As the Romanian delegate to the Young Communist International Congress in 1936, he was arrested in the Czechoslovakian city of Košice, and expelled from that country following several weeks in prison.

[19] Petre Gheorghe and Nicolae Atanasoff were found guilty of "crime against the state's security", being sentenced to capital punishment—as had been requested by the military prosecutor, Major P.

As the minutes of his execution show, he yelled "Down with war", "Long live Free Romania" and obscene words addressed to the Germans.

[22] According to an eyewitness, Gheorghe and Atanasoff were laid in coffins prepared beforehand, and buried under headstones which carried the text: "Executed as communists fighting against our fatherland in the interest of Bolshevism".