SIMA, HORIA°

SIMA, HORIA° (1908– ), leader of the Romanian iron guard . A secondary school teacher in Transylvania, Sima was among the first to join the Iron Guard of codreanu and after Codreanu's death (1938) became its leader. In 1939 he fled to Germany but, after temporary conciliation with King Carol, accepted a portfolio in the Romanian government (summer 1940). Following King Carol's abdication (Sept. 5, 1940), he was vice president under antonescu at the head of the "National Legionnaire State." Sima then visited several cities to administer personally the expropriation of property belonging to Jewish businessmen. In January 1941 he led the abortive legionnaire rebellion against Antonescu, during which 120 Jews were killed in bucharest . Afterwards Sima fled to Germany, where he was interned. In a letter to himmler he blamed the Jews for his defeat and accused Antonescu of being manipulated by the Jews. In August 1944, following the anti-Nazi coup in romania , he became head of the Iron Guard government in exile in Vienna. After the end of the war, he organized the migration of factions of the Iron Guard who had fallen out with the Romanian authority, and was active in the neofascist movement. In his Destinée du nationalisme (1951) he professed a type of nationalism diverging from national socialism and fascism. He was subsequently reported living in Spain. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: P. Pavel, Why Rumania Failed (1944), index. (Bela Adalbert Vago)