Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

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Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg after their conviction
Born May 12, 1918(1918-05-12) (Julius)
September 28, 1915(1915-09-28) (Ethel)
New York City, New York, United States (both)
Died June 19, 1953 (aged 35) (Julius)
June 19, 1953 (aged 37) (Ethel)
Sing Sing (both)
Penalty Capital punishment
Status Executed
Occupation Electrical engineer (Julius), Actress, Singer, Secretary (Ethel)
Children Michael Meeropol and Robert Meeropol

Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg (September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were American citizens who received international attention when they were executed having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage in relation to passing information on the American atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.

The guilt of the Rosenbergs and the appropriateness of their sentence have been subject of perennial debate; however, information released after the Cold War has been taken as confirming a charge against Julius about espionage, but not in relation to atomic bombs. Recent information does not support the charge that the Rosenbergs provided information that led to the Soviet Union developing the atomic bomb--the rationale for their execution.[1] According to the former Soviet agent who was Julius's contact: "He didn't understand anything about the atomic bomb and he couldn't help us." [2]

Contents

[edit] Background

Julius Rosenberg was born to a Jewish family on May 12, 1918 in New York City. His parents were poor immigrants who worked in the sweat shops of the Lower East Side in New York City. He became a leader in the Young Communist League where, in 1936, he met Ethel, whom he married three years later. He graduated from the City College of New York with a degree in electrical engineering in 1939 and in 1940 joined the Army Signal Corps, where he worked on radar equipment. Ethel Greenglass was born on September 28, 1915, in New York City, also to a Jewish family. She was an aspiring actress and singer, but eventually took a secretarial job at a shipping company. She became involved in labor disputes and joined the Young Communist League, USA, where she first met Julius. The Rosenbergs had two sons named Robert and Michael, who were adopted by teacher and songwriter Abel Meeropol (and took the Meeropol surname) after their parents' execution.

According to his supposed former NKVD handler, Alexandre Feklisov, Julius Rosenberg was originally recruited by the KGB on Labor Day 1942, by former NKVD spymaster Semyon Semenov.[3] Allegedly, Julius had been introduced to Semenov by Bernard Schuster, a high-ranking member of the Communist Party USA as well as Earl Browder's personal NKVD liaison, and after Semenov was recalled to Moscow in 1944, his duties were taken over by his apprentice, Feklisov.[3]

According to Feklisov, Julius was his most dedicated and valuable asset, providing thousands of classified reports from Emerson Radio, including a complete proximity fuze, the same design that was used to shoot down Gary Powers's U-2 in 1960. Under Feklisov's administration, Julius Rosenberg is said to have recruited sympathetic individuals to the KGB’s service, including Joel Barr, Alfred Sarant, William Perl and Morton Sobell.[4]

According to Feklisov's account, he was supplied by Perl, under Julius Rosenberg’s direction, with thousands of documents from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics including a complete set of design and production drawings for the Lockheed's P-80 Shooting Star. Feklisov says he learned through Julius that his brother-in-law David Greenglass was working on the top-secret Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and used Julius to recruit him.[3]

During World War II, the USSR and the U.S. became allies in war, but the U.S. government was highly suspicious of Joseph Stalin's intentions. As such, the Americans did not share information or seek assistance from the Soviet Union for the Manhattan Project. However, the Soviets were aware of the project as a result of espionage penetration of the U.S. government and had made a number of attempts to infiltrate its operations at the University of California, Berkeley. A number of project members — some high-profile, others lower in rank — did voluntarily give secret information to Soviet agents, many because they were sympathetic to Communism (or the Soviet Union's role in the war) and did not feel that the U.S. should have a monopoly on atomic weapons.[5]

After the war, the U.S. continued to resist efforts to share nuclear secrets, but the Soviet Union was able to produce its own atomic weapons by 1949. Its first nuclear test, "Joe 1", shocked the West with the speed in which it was produced. It was then discovered in January 1950 that Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee theoretical physicist working for the British mission in the Manhattan Project, had given key documents to the Russians throughout the war. Through Fuchs' confession, U.S. and United Kingdom intelligence agents were able to make a case against his "courier," Harry Gold, who was arrested on May 23, 1950. A former machinist at Los Alamos, Sergeant David Greenglass confessed to having passed secret information on to the USSR through Gold as well. Though he initially denied any involvement by his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, he claimed that her husband, Julius, had convinced his wife to recruit him while on a visit to him in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1944 and that Julius had also passed secrets. Another accused conspirator, Morton Sobell, was on vacation in Mexico City when both Rosenbergs were arrested. According to his story published in On Doing Time, he tried to figure out a way to reach Europe without a passport but ultimately abandoned that effort and was back in Mexico City when he was kidnapped by members of the Mexican secret police and driven to the U.S. border where he was arrested. The government claimed he had been deported, but in 1956 the Mexican government officially declared that he had never been deported. Regardless of how he was returned to the U.S., he was arrested and stood trial with the Rosenbergs on one count of conspiracy to commit espionage.

[edit] Trial and conviction

Police photograph of Julius Rosenberg after his arrest.
Police photograph of Julius Rosenberg after his arrest.
Mugshot of Ethel Rosenberg.
Mugshot of Ethel Rosenberg.

The trial of the Rosenbergs and Sobell began on March 6, 1951. The prosecution's primary witness, David Greenglass, stated that his sister Ethel typed notes containing U.S. nuclear secrets in the Rosenberg apartment in September 1945. He also asserted that a sketch he made of a cross section of the implosion-type atom bomb (the one dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, as opposed to the "gun method" triggering device that was in the one dropped on Hiroshima) was also turned over to Julius Rosenberg at that meeting.

From the beginning, the trial attracted a high amount of media attention, not unlike the trial of Alger Hiss. Aside from the Rosenbergs' own defense during the trial, there was not one single public expression of doubt as to their guilt in any media (even the left-wing and Communist press) before and during the trial. The first break in the media unanimity would not occur until August of 1951 when a series of articles ran in the independent left-wing newspaper The National Guardian. Only after the publication of those articles was a defense committee formed.

However, between the trial and the executions there were widespread protests and claims of Anti-semitism. For example Nobel Prize winner Jean-Paul Sartre called the case "a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation. By killing the Rosenbergs, you have quite simply tried to halt the progress of science by human sacrifice. Magic, witch-hunts, auto-da-fés, sacrifices—we are here getting to the point: your country is sick with fear... you are afraid of the shadow of your own bomb."[6] Others, including non-Communists such as Albert Einstein and Nobel-Prize-winning atomic scientist and Chemist Harold Urey,[citation needed] as well as Communists or left-leaning artists such as Nelson Algren, Dashiell Hammett, Jean Cocteau, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, protested the position of the American Government in what some termed America's Dreyfus Affair. Pablo Picasso wrote for a French magazine, "The hours count. The minutes count. Do not let this crime against humanity take place."[7] Pope Pius XII also condemned the execution.[8] The all-Black International Longshoremen’s Association Local 968 stopped working for a day in protest.[9] Cinema artists including Fritz Lang and Bertolt Brecht registered their protest.[10]

Although the notes allegedly typed by Ethel apparently contained little that was relevant to the Soviet atomic bomb project, this was sufficient evidence for the jury to convict on the conspiracy to commit espionage charge.

It is believed that part of the reason Ethel was indicted along with Julius was so that the prosecution could use her as a 'lever' to pressure Julius into giving up the names of others who were involved.[11] If that was the case, it did not work. On the witness stand, Julius asserted his right under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment to not incriminate himself whenever asked about his involvement in the Communist Party or with its members. Ethel did similarly. Neither defendant was viewed sympathetically by the jury.

The role played by Assistant U.S. Attorney Roy Cohn, the prosecutor in the case, is controversial, since Cohn stated in his autobiography that he influenced the selection of the judge, and pushed him to impose the death penalty on both Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

The Rosenbergs were convicted on March 29, 1951, and on April 5 were sentenced to death by Judge Irving Kaufman under Section 2 of the 1917 Espionage Act, 50 U.S. Code 32 (now 18 U.S. Code 794), which prohibits transmitting or attempting to transmit to a foreign government information "relating to the national defense." The conviction helped to fuel Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations into anti-American activities by U.S. citizens. While their devotion to the Communist cause was well documented, the Rosenbergs denied the espionage charges even as they faced the electric chair.

The couple were the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage-related activity during the Cold War. In imposing the death penalty, Judge Kaufman noted that he held them responsible not only for espionage but also for the deaths of the Korean War:

“ I consider your crime worse than murder...I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-Bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country. No one can say that we do not live in a constant state of tension. We have evidence of your treachery all around us every day for the civilian defense activities throughout the nation are aimed at preparing us for an atom bomb attack.[12] ”

Their case has been at the center of the controversy over communism in the United States ever since, with supporters steadfastly maintaining that their conviction was an egregious example of persecution typical of the "hysteria" of those times (see McCarthyism) and likening it to the witch hunts that marred Salem and medieval Europe (a comparison that provided the inspiration for Arthur Miller's critically acclaimed play, The Crucible). There is also a quotation by Ethel and Julius Rosenberg saying "We are the first victims of American fascism".

After the publication of the series in The National Guardian and the formation of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, some Americans came to believe both Rosenbergs were innocent or received too harsh a punishment, and a grassroots campaign was started to try to stop the couple's execution. Pope Pius XII appealed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower to spare the couple[13], but he refused on February 11, 1953, and all other appeals were also unsuccessful.[2]

[edit] Execution

The couple was executed at sundown in the electric chair at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, on June 19, 1953. This was delayed from the originally scheduled date of June 18 because, on June 17, Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas had granted a stay of execution. That stay resulted from the intervention in the case of Fyke Farmer, a Tennessee lawyer whose efforts had previously met with scorn from the Rosenbergs' attorney.[14]

On June 18, the Court was called back into special session to dispose of Douglas' stay rather than let the execution be delayed for months while the appeal that was the basis of the stay wended its way through the lower courts. The Court did not vacate Douglas's stay until noon on June 19. Thus, the execution then was scheduled for later in the evening after the start of the Jewish Sabbath. Desperately playing for more time, their lawyer, Emanuel Bloch, filed a complaint that this offended their Jewish heritage—so the execution was scheduled before sunset. Reports of the execution state that Julius died after the first application of electricity, but Ethel did not succumb immediately and was subjected to two more electrical charges before being pronounced dead. The chair was designed for a man of average size; and Ethel Rosenberg was a petite woman: this discrepancy resulted, it is claimed, in the electrodes fitting poorly and making poor electrical contact. Eyewitness testimony (as given by a newsreel report featured in the 1982 documentary film The Atomic Cafe) describes smoke rising from her head.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are buried at Wellwood Cemetery in Pinelawn (Suffolk County), New York.

[edit] The Rosenbergs' children

The Rosenbergs' two sons, Robert and Michael, were orphaned by the executions, and no relatives dared adopt them for fear of ostracism or worse. They were finally adopted by the songwriter Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne, and they assumed the Meeropol surname. Abel Meeropol (under the pen name of Lewis Allan) wrote the classic anti-lynching anthem "Strange Fruit", made famous by singer Billie Holiday. Robert and Michael co-wrote a book about the experience, We are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1975), and Robert wrote another book in 2004, An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey. In 1990, Robert founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a non-profit foundation that provides support for children whose parents are leftist activists involved in court cases.

Michael's daughter, Ivy Meeropol, directed a 2004 documentary about her grandparents, Heir to an Execution, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival.

The E. L. Doctorow novel, The Book of Daniel, is based on the Rosenberg case as seen through the eyes of the (fictionalised) son. It inspired the Sidney Lumet film, Daniel, starring Timothy Hutton.

[edit] Further Bibliography Detail

  • Feklisov, Aleksandr, and Kostin, Sergei, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs, Enigma Books (2001) 978-929631-24-7
  • Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth, Henry Holt (1983), hardcover, ISBN 0-03-049036-7
  • Robert and Michael Meeropol, "We Are Your Sons, The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenber," Second Edition, University of Illinois Press, 1986. [chapter 15 is a detailed refutation of Radosh and Milton's scholarship], hardcover ISBN 0-252-01263-1
  • Robert Meeropol, "An Execution in the Family," St. Martin's Press, 2003.
  • Tema Nason, Ethel: The Fictional Autobiography of Ethel Rosenberg (originally published by Delacourt, 1990, ISBN 0-440-21110-7, paperback by Dell, 1991, same ISBN, and by Syracuse, 2002, ISBN 0-8156-0745-8), a fictional account of Ethel's life and intuitively included things that came out in later accounts.
  • John Wexley The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Illustrated Section in appendix at back of book. Text in English. [15]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ New York Times, "KGB Agent Plays Down Atomic Role of Rosenbergs" (March 16, 1997).
  3. ^ a b c Feklisov, Aleksandr; Kostin, Sergei (2001). The Man Behind the Rosenbergs. Enigma books. ISBN 1-929631-08-1. 
  4. ^ Feklisov, Aleksandr; Kostin, Sergei (2001). The Man Behind the Rosenbergs. Enigma books, 140-147. ISBN 1-929631-08-1. 
  5. ^ See Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstell, Bombshell, Times Books, 1997 (ISBN 0-8129-2861-X) with reference to Theodore Alvin Hall and Saville Sax and their motives.
  6. ^ Schneir, Invitation to an Inquest, p. 254
  7. ^ L’Humanité may 1951
  8. ^ Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), p.137
  9. ^ "Unions throughout U.S. joining in plea to save the Rosenbergs," Daily Worker, January 15, 1953.
  10. ^ Malcolm P. Sharp; Was Justice Done? The Rosenberg-Sobell Case; with an introduction by Harold Urey p. 132 Copyright 1954 MReview Press; Library of Congress#56-10953
  11. ^ Roberts, Sam (2001). The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberge Case. Random House, 425-426,432. ISBN 0-375-76124-1. 
  12. ^ Judge Kaufman's Statement Upon Sentencing the Rosenbergs on the site of the University of Kansas City-Missouri School of Law. Accessed 28 September 2006.
  13. ^ Press, Associated. "50 years later, Rosenberg execution is still fresh", USAtoday.com, Gannett Co Inc, 2003-06-17. Retrieved on 2008-01-08. 
  14. ^ E. Thomas Wood, "Nashville now and then: A lawyer's last gamble", 2007-06-17. Retrieved on 2007-08-08. 
  15. ^ Published by Bookville London by arrangement with Cameron Associates New York in 1956 with no ISBN

11. Stanley Yalkowsky, "The murder of the Rosenbergs" Crucible Publications (July 1990) ISBN 978-0962098420

[edit] See also

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[edit] External links