Ștefan Plavăț

Who was Ștefan Plavăț?

Ștefan Plavăț was a Romanian communist activist, leader of a resistance group active in South-Western Romania during World War II.

Plavăț was born in Eșelnița, in South-Eastern Banat, to a family of poor peasants. Due to material difficulties, in 1927 he was forced to leave high school, and in autumn he enrolled in the Apprentices' School of the Romanian Railways in Timișoara. Here he came into contact with communist ideas and became an active member of the local worker movement. After finishing school, he was hired as a carpenter in the Timișoara CFR Workshops, and soon afterwards was elected a member in the committee of the local trade union. His political activism was seen as dangerous by the Workshops' management, and led to his re-assignment to a marginal branch of the enterprise.

Plavăț returned to Timișoara in the first years of World War II, rejoining the Workshops, and becoming a leading member of the local clandestine organisation of the Romanian Communist Party. As Romania's dictator Ion Antonescu had joined Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, Plavăț and others participated in the sabotage of the war production of the Axis.