Word: stoffel
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...Europe, walked four masked men. The time was 10 p.m. Coming to No. 5, which is the Rumanian legation, they climbed quietly over a high iron-grille fence. Looming above them in the snowy darkness was the big building presided over by Chargé d'Affaires Emeric Stoffel. To their left, in a chalet-type house near the street, was the chancellery, where lived Aurel Setu, nominally the chauffeur, but actually the secret police boss of the Communist legation. The leader of the masked men rang the bell at the chancellery. "Step inside," he said, when Madame Setu opened...
Four hours later in the big house, Chargé d'Affaires Stoffel was awakened by a burst of shots. A few minutes later some masked men with Tommy guns broke into his room. Stoffel dashed for the next room, followed by a burst of gunfire. Leaping through a window, he landed in the garden, and fled to the neighbors. Said he later, explaining why he left his wife and children behind: "I put myself into safety . . . This is not the kind of thing that happens in everyday diplomatic life...
...masked men did not molest the legation women and children, or Stoffel's two attaches, who escaped to the street. To the sound of smashing wood and glass, the masked men began ransacking the big house. When the Swiss police arrived, shivering, pajama-clad Stoffel, pleading diplomatic privilege, refused to let them into the grounds. Floodlights were directed on the legation, and the area encircled with barbed wire. A hundred steel-helmeted police armed with rifles and submachine guns covered the house. Finally, at dawn, with Stoffel's permission, the police broke into the legation grounds. Following...
...automatic weapons and grenades, he warned, and would resist "until death" because they knew that there was no escape for them. Searching him, cops found papers he had scooped up in the legation. After a prudent interval, the Swiss diplomatically returned the papers to Chargé d'Affaires Stoffel...
Chargé d'Affaires Stoffel, in an official diplomatic note to the Swiss Foreign Office, demanded immediate arrest and extradition of the attackers, accused the Swiss police of "inexcusable tardiness." He said that the attack was an "act of banditry without precedent" by "a gang of Rumanian fascists and other criminal elements, armed with automatic weapons, axes and knives," who had "pillaged" the legation. The Swiss simply replied that they did not like the tone of the Rumanians' protest...