"[59], The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. "We got nothing from the Rosenbergs. There was no compassion.. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were buried at Wellwood Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Pinelawn, New York. The request was denied. [41] Cinema artists such as Fritz Lang registered their protest. The storefront theater boasted 96 seats and charged each patron five cents. He admitted that he had given documents to the Soviet contact, but said these had to do with defensive radar and weaponry. Harry Gold, a lab chemist and Soviet spy, passed this information to the USSR. He claimed that he was kidnapped by members of the Mexican secret police and driven to the U.S. border, where he was arrested by U.S. In 1939, he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. 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. How. She was absolutely judged for her appearance, Sebba says. But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.. The children say that their father did not deserve the death penalty and that their mother was wrongly convicted. He also stated that he believed Ethel was only guilty of being Julius wife and was not an active participant in the espionage ring. In the United States of the late 1940s and 1950s, Fear was the overriding motif of the age, and fear breeds hysteria, Sebba says. 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 February 1950, Fuchs was arrested in the United Kingdom. On March 29, 1951, the court convicted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of conspiracy to commit espionage. The constitutionality and applicability of the Espionage Act of 1917, under which the Rosenbergs were tried, as well as the impartiality of the trial judge, Irving R. Kaufmanwho in pronouncing sentence had accused them of a crime worse than murderwere key issues during the appeals process. They were both found guilty of the crimes of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. Her husband, Julius, had been executed a short time before her. Online Documents. Schneir argues that Ruth worked alone and met with a Soviet agent to deliver a sketch of a bomb, which was placed in a KGB file center on December 27, 1945. [73], Michael and Robert co-wrote a book about their and their parents' lives, We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1975). 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. He provided classified documents and led an espionage network within the Manhattan Project, recruiting spies, most notably Russell McNutt and Ethels brother,David Greenglass, along with his wifeRuth. The young couple were arrested in 1950 for . As a young attorney in 1951, Cohn pushed for the execution of Meeropol's grandparents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges. Others question if the punishment was just for their crimes. Despite these fears, the trial of the Rosenbergs produced mixed reactions among the public. Explains that one of the most famous cases of spies was the case of ethel and julius rosenberg, who were minor activists in the american communist party and convicted of being communists. During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. On July 17, 1950 the FBI arrested Julius, and one month later Ethel was arrested. Ethels execution was botched. There were no confessions, no names produced of other Americans spying for the Soviets, and no admission of guilt by either Rosenberg. [36], Jean-Paul Sartre, a Marxist existentialist philosopher and writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, described the trial as, a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation. Most of them clearly regarded the Rosenbergs as martyred heroes and more than 500 mourners attended to-day's services, while a crowd estimated at 10,000 stood outside in burning heat. Their time at high school intersected briefly - Ethel was nearly. READ MORE: Why Were the Rosenbergs Executed? On March 29 they were found guilty, and on April 5 the couple was sentenced to death. The arrests of Greenglass and Julius Rosenberg followed quickly in June and July, and Ethel was arrested in August. "[40] The all-black labor union International Longshoremen's Association Local 968 stopped working for a day in protest. [78] In October 2016, both Michael and Robert Meeropol spoke with Anderson Cooper in an interview which aired on 60 Minutes. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the only spies executed during the Cold War and some question whether their sentence was fair. But at the trial, she testified that Ethel Rosenberg typed up notes about the atomic bomb. The second son of read more. Now, however, Greenglass claimed that this exchange occurred in the living room of the Rosenbergs New York apartment, and that Ethel was present. Ruth joined the Young Communist League (YCL) after graduating high school. "[52], At the grand jury, Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn't you write [the information] down on a piece of paper?" He then claimed that he passed this information to Julius on a New York street corner, and that Ethel was not involved. Red Resurrection? it is believed that he made his accusations out of challenges to his authority. A campaign was started to try to prevent the couple's execution. Judge Irving Kaufman presided over the trial, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Irving Saypol leading the prosecution and criminal defense lawyer Emmanuel Bloch representing the Rosenbergs. Harvard Law professorAlan Dershowitzstated that the Rosenbergs were guilty and framed, suggesting that they were spies, but that evidence was still fabricated against them, causing them to have an unjust trial and punishment. Tender. [7], Julius Rosenberg was born on May 12, 1918, in New York City to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. Some scholars suggest that the chances of Ethel being executed would have been less likely had Venona documents been unclassified and used in the trial. All rights reserved. On June 19, 1968, a long-term anti-poverty demonstration known as Resurrection City reaches its high-water mark. Gold paidGreenglass $500 in exchange for information about the implosion lens in the atomic bomb. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presided over the trial. Corrections? Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for espionage, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rosenbergs-executed. Or he could have thought, if I admit I am a spy, I will have to name names? [62] Ethel did not have a codename,[24] however, KGB messages which were contained in the Venona project's Vassiliev files, and which were not made public until 2009,[63][64] revealed that both Ethel and Julius had regular contact with at least two KGB agents and were active in recruiting not only Ethel's brother David Greenglass, but also another Manhattan Project spy named Russell McNutt. They took assumed names and he tried to figure out a way to reach Europe without a passport. [39] Einstein and Urey pleaded with President Truman to pardon the Rosenbergs. Ethels own brother, David Greenglass, testified against her, in a blatant act of perjury. [43][44], The execution was delayed from the originally scheduled date of June 18, because Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas had granted a stay of execution on the previous day. [73][24], After Morton Sobell's 2008 confession, they acknowledged their father had been involved in espionage, but said that whatever atomic bomb information he passed to the Russians was, at best, superfluous, that the case was riddled with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, that their mother was convicted on flimsy evidence to place leverage on her husband, and that neither deserved the death penalty. Or was he more likely to get off by pleading innocence for both of them? Neither offered any further information. He had been recruited to spy for the Soviet Union which was far from uncommon in those days and he subsequently passed on information about what was happening at Fort Monmouth. Michael and Robby Rosenberg were 10 and six respectively when their parents were executed. Julius Rosenberg was discharged by the army in 1945 for having lied about his membership in the Communist Party. [24], After the publication of an investigative 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 had received too harsh a sentence, particularly Ethel. Files Show About Ethel Rosenberg", "The New York Times Gets Greenglass Wrong", "Greenglass, in Prison, Vows to Kin He Told Truth about Rosenbergs", "National Archives of the United States of America", "Rosenberg Atomic Espionage Spy Case Chronology", "The Rosenbergs were executed for spying in 1953. And, in fact, the Rosenbergs themselves essentially believed that they had done nothing wrong in the grand scheme of things. [80][81] The race, held at the Indianapolis Motor read more, On June 19, 1917, during the third year of World War I, Britains King George V orders the British royal family to dispense with the use of German titles and surnames, changing the surname of his own family, the decidedly Germanic Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to Windsor. Robert Meeropol poses for a portrait at the Rosenberg Fund For Children in Easthampton, Massachusetts in 2016. Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (ne Greenglass; September 28, 1915 June 19, 1953) were an American couple who spied for the Soviet Union. This new testimony, now against Julius and Ethel, was part of a deal granted to the Greenglasses. They were convicted and executed in 1953. On March 6, 1951 their trial began in New Yorks Southern District federal court. 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[12] Perl supplied Feklisov, under Rosenberg's direction, with thousands of documents from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, including a complete set of design and production drawings for Lockheed's P-80 Shooting Star, the first U.S. operational jet fighter. Meeropol, Michael, " 'A Spy Who Turned His Family In': Revisiting David Greenglass and the Rosenberg Case,", This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 07:05. Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted, as were David Greenglass and Anatoli Yakovlev. He reportedly said, "She called our bluff", as she made no effort to push her husband to any action. 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. And she was the mother of my children. [47] The defense's strategy backfired. The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a brief trial that began on March 6, 1951, and attracted much media attention, the couple was convicted. Can their sons reveal the truth? [72], The notebooks make clear that the KGB considered Julius Rosenberg an effective agent and his wife Ethel an enthusiastic supporter of his work. J. [37], Others, including non-Communists such as Jean Cocteau and Harold Urey, a Nobel Prize-winning physical chemist,[38] as well as Communists and left-leaning figures such as Nelson Algren, Bertolt Brecht, Albert Einstein, Dashiell Hammett, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera, protested the position of the American government in what the French termed the U.S. Dreyfus affair. FBI agents took her into custody as she left the courthouse. 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. By 1945, the Soviets considered Rosenberg and his espionage network to be providing valuable information. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! On August 17, the grand jury returned an indictment alleging 11 overt acts. 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. [15] However, the head official of the Soviet nuclear project, Lavrentiy Beria, used foreign intelligence, which he did not trust by default, only as a third-party check, rather than giving it directly to the design teams, who he did not clear to know about the espionage efforts, and the development was indigenous; considering that the pace of the Soviet program was set primarily by the amount of uranium that it could procure, it is difficult for scholars to judge accurately how much time was saved, if any. Okay, I am a spy, but my wife isnt? [45], The execution was scheduled for 11p.m. that evening, during the Sabbath, which begins and ends around sunset. They provided top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and valuable nuclear weapon designs. "[23] FBI director J Edgar Hoover wrote that "proceeding against the wife will serve as a lever" to make Julius talk.[24]. He does, however, believe that the prosecutors worked to guarantee a conviction and abused the legal system. Her mother disowned her. This connection would be necessary as evidence if there was to be a conviction for espionage of the Rosenbergs. McNutt's employment provided access to secrets about processes for manufacturing weapons-grade uranium. He stated, "I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister. Some scholars argue that if it would have been possible to use Venona documents in court, both Hall and McNutt would have been revealed as spies and prosecuted, along with Greenglass and Fuchs. He said, "I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I don't remember. "Plain, deliberate, contemplated murder is dwarfed in. The direct evidence of the Rosenbergs involvement came from the confessions and testimonies of David and Ruth Greenglass. I think there could be some kind of exoneration, in that she was convicted on the basis of perjury, and for someone convicted on the basis of perjury, there should be a form of pardon. There was a fear of communism.. I ask if she can think of a modern equivalent of Ethels predicament: incarceration by association. The Greenglasses now claimed that Julius, with help from Ethel, recruited David into the atomic spy ring in 1944. The Rosenbergs were the first U.S. citizens to be convicted and executed for espionage during peacetime and their case remains controversial to this day. He said they had urged the death sentence for Ethel in an effort to extract a full confession from Julius. At this time, Greenglass worked at Los Alamos. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. He also claimed that his sister Ethel's husband Julius Rosenberg had convinced David's wife Ruth to recruit him while visiting him in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1944. And Intelligent" and the course they took was one of "courage and heroism. In 1949, the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) discovered that Fuchs was a Soviet spy. Greenglass secretly testified before a grand jury in August 1950. They were convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Espionage in one of the most hotly-debated trials in U.S. history. In early 1953, he wrote a letter to President Eisenhower, requesting that Ethel and Julius sentences be commuted to prison. 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. On April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death and the pair was taken to Sing Sing to await execution. [9], Julius Rosenberg joined the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, in 1940, where he worked as an engineer-inspector until 1945. Du Bois wrote a poem titled "The Rosenbergs", which began "Crucify us, Vengeance of God, as we crucify two more Jews" and ended "Who has been crowned on yonder stair? Magic, witch-hunts, autos-da-f, sacrifices we are here getting to the point: your country is sick with fear you are afraid of the shadow of your own bomb. 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. Many individuals still question whether or not there was enough valid evidence used during the trial to convict and execute the Rosenbergs. There was genuine fear that the Russians and Stalin would launch an atom bomb on America. "[56], Boris V. Brokhovich, the engineer who later became director of Chelyabinsk-40, the plutonium production reactor and extraction facility that the Soviet Union used to create its first bomb material, alleged that Khrushchev was a "silly fool". [8], Ethel Greenglass was born on September 28, 1915, to a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to receive that penalty during peacetime. The two were frequently regarded as victims of cynical and vindictive officials of the FBI. Communism in this country and Communism throughout the world. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg sitting in police van after being convicted of espionage. She and David met in the YCL, and married in 1942. He escaped prosecution because his involvement was not proven until the Venona documents became unclassified. His arrest began a chain of investigations, which ultimately led to the arrest of Julius and Ethel. His wife, born Ethel Greenglass, also in New York, on September 28, 1915, worked as a secretary. 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. Her attorney asked the U.S. commissioner to parole her in his custody over the weekend, so that she could make arrangements for her two young children. To this day, historians and scientists debate how much espionage sped up the progress of the Soviet Unions nuclear weapons program. Some reports claim that the Rosenbergs were offered a plea deal, where admittance of their guilt would grant them a prison sentence. In the intervening decades, it has since been conclusively proved that David Greenglass committed perjury against his own sister. Feklisov learned through Rosenberg that Ethel's brother David Greenglass was working on the top-secret Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory; he directed Julius to recruit Greenglass. Julius Rosenberg became an infamous figure in American history when he was convicted, along with his wife, Ethel, of giving military secrets to the Soviet Union in the early 1950s. Ethel became the first woman executed by the U.S. government since Mary Surratt was hanged in 1865 for her alleged role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Sebba says the only lesson history offers is that there are no lessons to be learned. The American Civil Liberties Union refused to acknowledge any violations of civil liberties in the case. He believed the execution of Ethel, a young mother, would reflect negatively on both the FBI and the Justice Department. The American pair were . They were executed in 1953. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. [63][65][64] Though the public release of Vassiliev's notebooks did not occur until 2009, the notebooks had in fact been originally intercepted during the Venona decryptions. Ethel Rosenberg was 37 and the mother of two small sons when she was executed in New York in 1953. [71], In 2009, extensive notes collected from KGB archives were made public in a book published by Yale University Press: Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev; Vassiliev's notebooks included KGB comments concerning Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Julius Rosenberg was a key Soviet spy who passed along information to the Soviet Union and recruited Manhattan Project spies. The Rosenbergs were small fry, but the government or the FBI or both were absolutely determined to make an example of them. In 1951, Julius and his wife Ethel were tried and convicted of espionage for providing the Soviet Union with classified information. The young journalist [Raman Pratsevich] arrested in Belarus with his girlfriend [Sofia Sapega]. After learning about the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, read about the Lavender Scare, the U.S. government's anti-gay purge. Due to Red Scare trials and newspaper headlines, Americans in the 1940s, and 1950s knew that Soviet espionage was serious. Despite massive, worldwide protest, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953, at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY. After Semyonov was recalled to Moscow in 1944 his duties were taken over by Feklisov. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. A letter from Michael and Robert Rosenberg pleading for the life of their parents. Julius Rosenberg was an engineer for the U.S. Army Signal Corps who was born in New York on May 12, 1918. In 1933, in his early teens, he became politically inflamed after hearing a street corner orator talk about Tom Mooney, a San Francisco labor leader who, said the speaker, had been unjustly . An exoneration is what the two sons would like, the author says. The Rosenberg Case. Two more electric shocks were applied, and at the conclusion eyewitnesses reported that smoke rose from her head. 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.. That stay resulted from intervention in the case by Fyke Farmer, a Tennessee lawyer whose efforts had previously been scorned by the Rosenbergs' attorney, Emanuel Hirsch Bloch. The boys went on to make successful careers in economics and law, and have families of their own. The case against Ethel in particular was rather . Many Americans who were politically left-wing believed the Rosenbergs were persecuted solely for their past involvement with the Communist Party. Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg (1915-1953) and Julius Rosenberg (1918-1953) were American Communists who were thrust into the world spotlight when they were tried, convicted, and executed for spying for the Soviet Union.The accuracy of these charges remains controversial, though decades later, Soviet communications decrypted by the VENONA project became publicly available and appeared to indicate . Greenglass, who himself had confessed to providing nuclear secrets to the Soviets through an intermediary, testified against his sister and brother-in-law in court. Follow Russia Beyond on Telegram. [66], In 2001, David Greenglass recanted his testimony about his sister having typed the notes. Rosenberg had been introduced to Semyonov by Bernard Schuster, a high-ranking member of the Communist Party USA and NKVD liaison for Earl Browder. The case was intensely controversial, touching nerves throughout American society, and debates about the Rosenbergs continue to the present day. They married in 1939. Under Feklisov's supervision, Rosenberg recruited sympathetic individuals into NKVD service, including Joel Barr, Alfred Sarant, William Perl, and Morton Sobell, also an engineer. The Meeropols were both teachers, and Abel was also a lyricist. John Philip Jenkins; 3 1952, -, , ) , That same year, the FBI arrested both Greenglass and Gold based on information provided by Fuchs. [33], In imposing the death penalty, Kaufman noted that he held the Rosenbergs responsible not only for espionage but also for American deaths in the Korean War:[34]. On August 11, 1950, Ethel Rosenberg was arrested after testifying before a grand jury (see section, below). I think she was clearly innocent of the charges but, on the other hand, I think she was supportive of Julius. Julius Rosenberg, arrest photograph, 17th of July, 1950. "[70], He said that he thought the hand-drawn diagrams and other atomic-bomb details that were acquired by David Greenglass and passed to Julius were of "little value" to the Soviet Union, and were used only to corroborate what they had already learned from the other atomic spies.
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