Parliament palace

(Romanian pronunciation: [eˈlena tʃauˈʃesku]; January 7, 1916 – December 25, 1989) was the wife of Romania's Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu, and Deputy Prime Minister of Romania.


Background
She was born Elena Petrescu into a peasant family in the village of Petreşti, Baloteşti commune, Ilfov County, in the informal region of Wallachia. Her family was supported by her father's job as a ploughman. Elena's education ended at the fourth grade and she moved along with her brother to Bucharest, where she worked as a laboratory assistant before getting a job at a textile factory. She joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1937 and met 21-year-old Nicolae Ceauşescu in 1939.

They married on December 23, 1947. On their wedding day she forged her birth certificate (her birth year was changed from 1916 to 1919 in order to make her look younger than her husband Nicolae, who was two years her junior).