This April 5, 1951, Universal Newsreel reports on the death penalty for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. They were the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War. This request was denied. They were sentenced to death on April 5 under Section 2 of the Espionage Act of 1917,[31] which provides that anyone convicted of transmitting or attempting to transmit to a foreign government "information relating to the national defense" may be imprisoned for life or put to death. They were persuaded to change their original stories. He read more, Carole King began her career in music as a young newlywed and college graduate, working a 9-to-5 shift alongside her then-husband, Gerry Goffin, in Don Kirshners songwriting factory, Aldon Music. In the United States of the late 1940s and 1950s, Fear was the overriding motif of the age, and fear breeds hysteria, Sebba says. [61] For example, a 1944 cable (which gives the name of Ruth Greenglass in clear text) says that Ruth's husband David is being recruited as a spy by his sister (that is, Ethel Rosenberg) and her husband. On August 11, 1950, Ethel Rosenberg was arrested after testifying before a grand jury (see section, below). Case Summary. They were both found guilty. 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. The three-year Rosenberg case culminated in their execution on Friday, 19 June, 1953, just minutes before the onset of the Jewish Sabbath. Documents relating to the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Case, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, A statement by the Rosenberg's sons in support of their exoneration, An Interview with Robert Meeropol about the adoption, National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case, Annotated bibliography for Ethel Rosenberg from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues, Annotated bibliography for Julius Rosenberg from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues, The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), Rosenberg Son: "My Parents Were Executed Under the Unconstitutional Espionage Act", History on Trial: The Rosenberg Case in E.L. Doctorow's, Julius Rosenberg at court sentenced to death, The WSWS speaks to Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs son An interview with Robert Meeropol, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg&oldid=1142051620, American people convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2021, Articles with failed verification from November 2022, Articles with French-language sources (fr), Wikipedia external links cleanup from October 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Images of the Rosenbergs are engraved on a memorial in, The execution is explored in great detail and serves as the premise of, Clune, Lori. The Rosenbergs were implicated by David Greenglass, Ethels younger brother and a former army sergeant and machinist at Los Alamos, the secret atomic bomb lab in New Mexico. Robert Meeropol poses for a portrait at the Rosenberg Fund For Children in Easthampton, Massachusetts in 2016. [80][81] Ruth statedin her witness testimony:Julius then took the info into the bathroom and read it and when he came out he called Ethel and told her she had to type this info immediately. He also named Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as contacts and denied that his wife, Ruth Greenglass, was involved with any espionage activities. They married in 1939. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were buried at Wellwood Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Pinelawn, New York. "[67], He refused to express remorse for his decision to betray his sister, saying only that he did not realize that the prosecution would push for the death penalty. (Sobell and Gold received 30-year prison terms, and Greenglass, who was tried separately, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.) "[52], At the grand jury, Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn't you write [the information] down on a piece of paper?" Robert wrote a later memoir, An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey (2003). He also said that he believed Ethel Rosenberg was aware of her husband's deeds, but took no part in them. "Injustice", Sutton Publishing. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg devoted a great deal of time in prison to crafting eloquent protestations of their complete innocence. They continue to campaign for Ethel to be posthumously legally exonerated. Ethels own brother, David Greenglass, testified against her, in a blatant act of perjury. Due to the recent evidence provided by Sobells interview, witness testimonies, and the Venona documents, calls have been made for Ethels exoneration. After she was given the normal course of three electric shocks, attendants removed the strapping and other equipment only to have doctors determine that Ethel's heart was still beating. [13][14], The USSR and the U.S. were allies during World War II, but the Americans did not share information with, or seek assistance from, the Soviet Union regarding the Manhattan Project. Due to Red Scare trials and newspaper headlines, Americans in the 1940s, and 1950s knew that Soviet espionage was serious. An American Tragedy By Anne Sebba. Despite massive, worldwide protest, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953, at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY. The young journalist [Raman Pratsevich] arrested in Belarus with his girlfriend [Sofia Sapega]. Browse pg9767.kgb resources on Teachers Pay Teachers, a marketplace trusted by millions of teachers for original educational resources. David Greenglass, who was assigned as a machinist to the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, provided the Rosenbergs with data on nuclear weapons. They were accused of sending a rough sketch of the atomic bomb to Russia. During the 1940s, the U. S. Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) conducted the Venona project. For two years the Rosenberg case was appealed through the courts and before world opinion. John Seven Sep 19, 2018 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who. The family moved to the Lower East Side by the time Julius was 11. When questioned, Greenglass admitted to spying. The trial of the Rosenbergs became a political event of greater importance than any damage they may have done to the United States. The Rosenbergs were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage and brought to trial on March 6, 1951; Greenglass was the chief witness for the prosecution. "[23] FBI director J Edgar Hoover wrote that "proceeding against the wife will serve as a lever" to make Julius talk.[24]. The project aimed to gather and decode messages sent by Soviet military intelligence (KGB and GRU) to the U.S. Venona would also help the government locate spy rings. In later interviews, he claimed: I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I dont remember, and, My wife is more important to me than my sister. Overall, their testimony remains controversial because of the deal, the lack of tangible evidence, and the conflicting statements. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/ AFP via Getty. Many commentators of the time argued that the death penalty was used unjustly in the courts as a way to force the Rosenbergs and others to confess to espionage, or to name others involved. They provided top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and valuable nuclear weapon designs. Despite these fears, the trial of the Rosenbergs produced mixed reactions among the public. He said Julius had passed secrets and thus linked him to the Soviet contact agent Anatoli Yakovlev. He said the Soviets had developed their own bomb by trial and error. His wife, born Ethel Greenglass, also in New York, on September 28, 1915, worked as a. [60], In 1995, the U.S. government made public many documents decoded by the Venona project, showing Julius Rosenberg's role as part of a productive ring of spies. Give Bomb Data to Soviet Is Laid to His Sister Here", "Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg (American spies) Britannica Online Encyclopedia", "Judge Kaufman's Sentencing Statement in the Rosenberg Case", "The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg", "Nashville now and then: A lawyer's last gamble", "Funeral Tributes To Rosenbergs: Execution Denounced", "Never Losing Faith for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg", "False testimony clinched Rosenberg spy trial", "50 years later, Rosenberg execution is still fresh", "Khrushchev on Rosenbergs: Stoking Old Embers", "K.G.B. [68], Numerous articles were published in 2008 related to the Rosenberg case. In 2008, the transcripts of 43 out of 46 witness testimonies before the grand jury were released, including Ruths testimony. In this testimony he named Julius and claimed he was recruited to join the Soviet spy ring by him. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the U.S., the program continued during the Cold War when it was considered an enemy. The network included: engineers (Julius Rosenberg, Nathan Sussman, Joel Barr, Alfred Sarant,Morton Sobell), a military aviation scientist (William Perl), a civil design engineer (McNutt), and a machinist (Greenglass), among others. Neither offered any further information. Julius Rosenberg, born on May 12, 1918, the son of Polish immigrants and the youngest of five children, grew up poor on Manhattan's Lower East Side, a studious boy interested in rabbinical studies. Myles Lane, a member of the prosecution team, said that the case against Ethel Rosenberg was "not too strong", but that it was "very important that she be convicted too, and given a stiff sentence. [79] In January 2017 Senator Elizabeth Warren sent Obama a letter requesting consideration of the exoneration request. The son of working-class read more. did not give her a code name, and evidently did not consider her a spy; and the prosecutions strategy was to use Ethel to coerce her husband to confession.. The cable also makes clear that the sister's husband is involved enough in espionage to have his own codename ("Antenna" and later "Liberal"). And, in fact, the Rosenbergs themselves essentially believed that they had done nothing wrong in the grand scheme of things. Later, Ethels brother, Sgt. He left the Communist Party to avoid suspicions. He stated that he and Julius passed military and industrial information to the Soviet Union, hoping it would help them defeat the Nazis in World War II. read more, When the clock struck midnight on June 19, 2014, King Juan Carlos I of Spains nearly 40-year reign came to an end. [76][24], In 2015, following the most recent grand jury transcript release, Michael and Robert Meeropol called on U.S. President Barack Obama's administration to acknowledge that Ethel Rosenberg's conviction and execution was wrongful and to issue a proclamation exonerating her. Fuchs was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, and he confessed to spying for the Soviet Union. A worldwide campaign for mercy failed, and the Rosenbergs were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. T he case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the young Jewish American couple executed in June 1953 at the height of the cold war for allegedly passing atomic secrets to the Russians, has weighed . Ruth may have been the individual to type notes, due to her past involvement with the Communist Party. They claimed that David gave a sketch and description of an atomic bomb to Julius in September 1945. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were American Communists who captured and maintained world attention after being accused and convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.. [11] By this time, following the invasion by Nazi Germany in June 1941, the Soviet Union had become an ally of the Western powers, which included the United States after Pearl Harbor. Members of the communist party, the Rosenbergs were convicted of passing secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union in 1945. Updates? They hoped merely by arresting her on these trumped-up charges, surely Julius would talk, because thats what everyone else had done.. Documents cover, among many other topics, US intelligence activities, including FBI-CIA cooperation; USSR intelligence activities; the Rosenberg espionage network's collection against the US atomic energy program; their attempts to protect the network as US . Ethel and Julius Rosenberg sitting in police van after being convicted of espionage. During the trial, both Ethel and Julius pleaded the Fifth Amendment when asked repeated questions related to espionage, and when questioned about being members of the Communist Party. The direct evidence of the Rosenbergs involvement came from the confessions and testimonies of David and Ruth Greenglass. Three years after the trial, on June 19th, 1953 the Rosenbergs were executed. David originally had said that he had passed the atomic data he had collected to Julius on a New York street corner. Espionage was a major concern for the United States government during the Manhattan Project. Julius Rosenberg was arrested on suspicion of espionage on June 17, 1950, and accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Moynihan found that in 1945, physicist Hans Bethe estimated that the Soviets would be able to build their own bomb in five years. That same year, the FBI arrested both Greenglass and Gold based on information provided by Fuchs. Cohn would go on later to work for Senator Joseph McCarthy, appointed as chief counsel to the investigations subcommittee during McCarthy's tenure as chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee. His wife, born Ethel Greenglass, also in New York, on September 28, 1915, worked as a secretary. [22], Twenty senior government officials met secretly on February 8, 1950, to discuss the Rosenberg case. Seven different appeals reached the Supreme Court of the United States and were denied, and pleas for executive clemency were dismissed by Pres. There was genuine fear that the Russians and Stalin would launch an atom bomb on America. Rosenberg's arrest had been preceded by the arrest of Harry Gold and David Greenglass, Rosenberg's brother-in-law, and was to be followed three and a half weeks later by the arrest of his wife, Ethel. In his viewpoint, Ethel was only minimally involved and therefore her execution was unjust. She was removed from the electric chair after three charges, only for it to be discovered her heart was still beating, so, gruesomely, she had to be strapped back into it. But at the trial, she testified that Ethel Rosenberg typed up notes about the atomic bomb. [58] According to Alexander Feklisov, the former Soviet agent who was Julius's contact, the Rosenbergs did not provide the Soviet Union with any useful material about the atomic bomb: "He [Julius] didn't understand anything about the atomic bomb and he couldn't help us. I think she was clearly innocent of the charges but, on the other hand, I think she was supportive of Julius. (review of. McNutt's employment provided access to secrets about processes for manufacturing weapons-grade uranium. They were charged with conspiracy and providing atomic secrets to the USSR. In 1951, Julius and his wife Ethel were tried and convicted of espionage for providing the Soviet Union with classified information. There was no compassion.. I think it is the most horrific story, Sebba says. Another conspirator, Morton Sobell, a college classmate of Julius Rosenberg, fled to Mexico but was extradited. [49], The funeral services were held in Brooklyn on June 21. Not answering questions proved to be problematic for the Rosenbergs because during theera of McCarthyism, many believed that the refusal to answer questions was an admission of guilt and involvement with the Communist Party. His arrest began a chain of investigations, which ultimately led to the arrest of Julius and Ethel. [16], In January 1950, the U.S. discovered that Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee theoretical physicist working for the British mission in the Manhattan Project, had given key documents to the Soviets throughout the war. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working in Los Alamos, was convicted in the United Kingdom. He worked for a time at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where research was going on into radar, missile controls and electronics. Photograph: Craig F Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty. 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. (The former was released as the motion picture Daniel in 1983.) In 2015 an independent lawsuit secured the release of grand jury testimony in 1950 by Greenglass, which indicated that he might have lied at trial by exaggerating his sisters role in the espionage ring in order to obscure the more extensive involvement of his wife Ruth, who was not prosecuted. Follow Russia Beyond on Telegram. 2006. By 1945, the Soviets considered Rosenberg and his espionage network to be providing valuable information. [75], Their sons' current position is that Julius was legally guilty of the conspiracy charge, though not of atomic spying, while Ethel was only generally aware of his activities. On April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death and the pair was taken to Sing Sing to await execution. The minutes count. Gordon Dean, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, said: "It looks as though Rosenberg is the kingpin of a very large ring, and if there is any way of breaking him by having the shadow of a death penalty over him, we want to do it."
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