Catherine Caradja

Catherine Caradja

Princess Catherine Olympia Caradja (born Ecaterina Olimpia Creţulescu on January 28, 1893, died May 26, 1993) was a celebrated Romanian aristocrat and philanthropist. Born in Bucharest, she grew up in England and France, and lived in Romania from 1908 to 1952, when she escaped from the communist regime on a Danube boat. An expatriate in the United States for 35 years, and a longtime resident of the Hill Country of Texas, she returned after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 to Bucharest, where she died a centenarian.

Princess Caradja is known for her humanitarian work in the interbellum, and especially for her efforts to ease the burden of captivity for over a thousand American and British airmen, taken prisoner during the bombing of Romania in World War II. She cared for them on her property and in the hospitals she ran; those activities earned her the nickname "Angel of Ploieşti" among the crews. In 1977, she was awarded the George Washington Honor Medal by the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.