In 1951, Julius and his wife Ethel were tried and convicted of espionage for providing the Soviet Union with classified information. Anne Sebbas biography of Ethel Rosenberg, a book five years in the research and writing, has just been published. ", Deborah Friedell, "How Utterly Depreaved!" 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. 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. There was international outrage at her death. Well yes, she replies. There was a fear of communism.. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were American Communists who captured and maintained world attention after being accused and convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.. All other appeals were also unsuccessful. 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. The vault, which now has the capacity to hold read more, In what is nowknownas Juneteenth, on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrive in Galveston, Texas with news that the Civil War is over and slavery in the United States is abolished. Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg were American citizens executed for conspiracy to commit espionage, relating to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Red Resurrection? Julius Rosenberg, arrest photograph, 17th of July, 1950. An exoneration is what the two sons would like, the author says. She had the unhappy distinction of being the first woman in the US to be executed for a crime other than murder. In 1990, he founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a nonprofit foundation that provides support for children of targeted liberal activists, and youth who are targeted as activists. His wife, born Ethel Greenglass, also in New York, on September 28, 1915, worked as a secretary. In the intervening decades, it has since been conclusively proved that David Greenglass committed perjury against his own sister. In August of 1950, a grand jury indicted the Rosenbergs for espionage. "[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. They also defendedSobell, who was put on trial with the Rosenbergs. Okay, I am a spy, but my wife isnt? In February 1950, Fuchs was arrested in the United Kingdom. Case Summary. Venona Documents from the National Security Archive. In 2008, the National Archives of the United States published most of the grand jury testimony related to the prosecution of the Rosenbergs. He said, "I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I don't remember. Others question if the punishment was just for their crimes. Ethel was arrested to put pressure on Julius and they didnt want to kill her. Gold paidGreenglass $500 in exchange for information about the implosion lens in the atomic bomb. Ruth joined the Young Communist League (YCL) after graduating high school. 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." [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. Key to the prosecution's case was testimony by Ethel's . Decrypted cables revealed this information through theVenona project. It was the wrong advice to them to go on pleading the Fifth Amendment because it made it seem as if they were on trial for being communists, which at some subliminal level, of course they were. Despite massive, worldwide protest, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953, at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. He wrote Strange Fruit, a song made famous by Billie Holiday, and the royalties from that and other songs kept the family comfortable. 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. She knew what he was doing She was complicit merely by knowing, so thats why they charged them with conspiracy to commit espionage.. [77], In March2016, Michael and Robert (via the Rosenberg Fund for Children) launched a petition campaign calling on President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to formally exonerate Ethel Rosenberg. She became involved in labor disputes and joined the Young Communist League, where she met Julius in 1936. The children say that their father did not deserve the death penalty and that their mother was wrongly convicted. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, American communists, executed after having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. Many individuals still question whether or not there was enough valid evidence used during the trial to convict and execute the Rosenbergs. And Intelligent" and the course they took was one of "courage and heroism. The trial continues to be controversial today. During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. Distinguished Professor of History, Baylor University. Gold was arrested on May 23, 1950, in connection with the case of the British spy Klaus Fuchs, who had been arrested for giving U.S. and British nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. The trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was certainly dramatic. 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. 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. [18][19], On July 17, 1950, Julius Rosenberg was arrested on suspicion of espionage[20] based on David Greenglass's confession. The attorneys appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court nine times, but the Court never reviewed the record. "[57], The notes allegedly typed by Ethel apparently contained little that was directly used in the Soviet atomic bomb project. On August 17, the grand jury returned an indictment alleging 11 overt acts. She also interviewed both Michael and Robby, the Rosenbergs sons, now in their 70s. A native of Belgium, De Smet came to the United States in 1821 at the age of 20. Mr. Bloch [their counsel], who delivered one of the main orations, bitterly exclaimed that America was "living under the heel of a military dictator garbed in civilian attire": the Rosenbergs were "Sweet. He worked for a time at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where research was going on into radar, missile controls and electronics. (The former was released as the motion picture Daniel in 1983.) 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. FBI agents took her into custody as she left the courthouse. He also said that he believed Ethel Rosenberg was aware of her husband's deeds, but took no part in them. Her husband, Julius, had been executed a short time before her. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. "[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. [30], On March 29, 1951, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage. "[59], The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. The family moved to the Lower East Side by the time Julius was 11. In 1949, the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) discovered that Fuchs was a Soviet spy. "[51], The Rosenbergs were the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War. [21][22] The U.S. government claimed Sobell was arrested by the Mexican police for bank robbery on August 16, 1950, and extradited the next day to the United States in Laredo, Texas. [70], In a subsequent letter to The New York Times, Sobell denied that he knew anything about Julius Rosenberg's alleged atomic espionage activities, and that the only thing he knew for sure was what he himself did in association with Julius Rosenberg. She replied, "Yes, I wrote [the information] down on a piece of paper and [Julius Rosenberg] took it with him." Nickelodeons (named for a read more, Francesca Rojas two young children are killed in their home in the small town of Necochea, Argentina. He believed the execution of Ethel, a young mother, would reflect negatively on both the FBI and the Justice Department. Copyright 2022 by the Atomic Heritage Foundation. Perl contributed to the development of the first jet fighter in the U.S. [35], Across the world, especially in Western European capitals, there were numerous protests with picketing and demonstrations in favor of the Rosenbergs, along with editorials in otherwise pro-American newspapers, and a plea for clemency from the Pope. According to Rojas, a man named Velasquez had threatened her when she rejected his sexual advances earlier in the day. The Soviet Union secretly conducted its first atomic weapons test on August 29, 1949. "[52], At the grand jury, Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn't you write [the information] down on a piece of paper?" In her re-interview, Ruth Greenglass expanded on her husband's version: 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 information immediately Ethel then sat down at the typewriter which she placed on a bridge table in the living room and proceeded to type the information that David had given to Julius. 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. 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. McNutt's employment provided access to secrets about processes for manufacturing weapons-grade uranium. Some people believed that the Rosenbergs were the victims of a surge of hysterical anti-communist feeling in the United States, and protested that the death sentence handed down was cruel and unusual punishment. "[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". He affirmed: I said before, and say it again, honestly, this is a fact: I never spoke to my sister about this at all.. This declassified information included a trove of decoded Soviet cables (code-name: Venona), which detailed Julius's role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets, and information about Ethel's role as an accessory who helped recruit her brother David into the spy ring and did clerical tasks such as typing up documents that Julius then passed to the Soviets. Would they have believed him? Kaufman, who also stated his concerns about executing the Rosenbergs on the Sabbath, rescheduled the execution for 8p.m.before sunset and the Sabbaththe regular time for executions at Sing Sing. 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.. Three years after the trial, on June 19th, 1953 the Rosenbergs were executed. 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. The execution of New York City couple Ethel and Julius Rosenberg after their conviction for being Soviet spies was a major news event of the early 1950s. But this testimony was not shown to lawyers during the Rosenbergs trial. In 2008, the transcripts of 43 out of 46 witness testimonies before the grand jury were released, including Ruths testimony. 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. The trial of the Rosenbergs became a political event of greater importance than any damage they may have done to the United States. [11], Rosenberg provided thousands of classified reports from Emerson Radio, including a complete proximity fuse. Omissions? Harry Truman in 1952 and Pres. [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. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! [39] Einstein and Urey pleaded with President Truman to pardon the Rosenbergs. 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 was 51. In 1861, the liberal Mexican Benito Juarez became president of a country in financial read more, In Music Fund Hall in Philadelphia, the first national convention of the Republican Party, founded two years before, comes to its conclusion. [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. The debate over her involvement is ongoing. Ethels execution was botched. [45], The execution was scheduled for 11p.m. that evening, during the Sabbath, which begins and ends around sunset. Do not let this crime against humanity take place. 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 fifty thousand and who knows how many millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason.. [11], In February 1944, Rosenberg succeeded in recruiting a second source of Manhattan Project information, engineer Russell McNutt, who worked on designs for the plants at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Since the Rosenbergs were being charged with conspiracy, no tangible evidence was required. They were executed in 1953. In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage under the U.S. There was proof, which was later produced in court. The FBI arrested Greenglass for espionage in June of 1950. The son of working-class read more. 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. She was absolutely judged for her appearance, Sebba says. [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. In 1939, he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. He stated, I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world. Their trial remains controversial today. In the scant three years between her arrest and. To this day, historians and scientists debate how much espionage sped up the progress of the Soviet Unions nuclear weapons program. How much does Sebba think that Ethel knew? There were no confessions, no names produced of other Americans spying for the Soviets, and no admission of guilt by either Rosenberg. Sebba says the only lesson history offers is that there are no lessons to be learned. John Philip Jenkins; 3 1952, -, , ) , Due to the recent evidence provided by Sobells interview, witness testimonies, and the Venona documents, calls have been made for Ethels exoneration. 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. At age 23, he was a prosecutor on the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union in 1951 and executed by electric chair two years. Author of. Ethel's execution did not go smoothly. [41] Cinema artists such as Fritz Lang registered their protest. They were persuaded to change their original stories. [46] The Times reported that 500 people attended, while some 10,000 stood outside:[50], The bodies had been brought from Sing Sing prison by the national "Rosenberg committee" which undertook the funeral arrangements, and an all-night vigil was held in one of the largest mortuary chapels in Brooklyn. He later served 10 years in prison. Many Americans who were politically left-wing believed the Rosenbergs were persecuted solely for their past involvement with the Communist Party. In early 1953, he wrote a letter to President Eisenhower, requesting that Ethel and Julius sentences be commuted to prison. Agent Plays Down Atomic Role Of Rosenbergs", "The September 21, 1944 cable: The Rosenbergs and the Greenglasses", "In This True-Life Spy Story, It's America vs. Russia, the Early Years", "Grasping at Straws to Try to Exonerate Ethel Rosenberg", "Why Ethel Rosenberg Should Not Be Exonerated", "Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America", "David Greenglass, the Brother Who Doomed Ethel Rosenberg, Dies at 92", "Witness Changed Her Story During Rosenberg Spy Case", "For First Time, Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviets", "Father Was a Spy, Sons Conclude With Regret", "My Parents Were Executed Under the Unconstitutional Espionage Act", "The Meeropol Brothers: Exonerate Our Mother, Ethel Rosenberg", "The Meeropol brothers: Exonerate our mother, Ethel Rosenberg", "The Rosenberg boys: The Cold War's most famous orphans", "Sen. Warren joins call for Ethel Rosenberg's exoneration", "Warren, Neal ask Obama to consider pardoning Ethel Rosenberg" (, "Flashback: Hear Bob Dylan's Lost 1983 Song 'Julius and Ethel', "Billy Joel We Didn't Start the Fire Lyrics", "David Greenglass grand jury testimony transcript", "Secret Grand Jury Testimony From Ethel Rosenberg's Brother Is Released", Learn how and when to remove this template message, Guide to the Playscript about the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Espionage Trial, An Interactive Rosenberg Espionage Ring Timeline and Archive. At this time, Greenglass worked at Los Alamos. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg sitting in police van after being convicted of espionage. Through her activism with the Communist Party, she met Julius Rosenberg in 1936. 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. Conspiracy to commit espionage (50 U.S.C. The execution of two human beings is a grave matter. It was known that some communists, such as Fuchs, had spied for the Soviets. Sebba, who lives in Surrey, dug into archives containing Ethels letters written during the three years she spent in prison, and grand jury testimony papers of the trial. Julius Rosenberg was an engineer for the U.S. Army Signal Corps who was born in New York on May 12, 1918. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. They took assumed names and he tried to figure out a way to reach Europe without a passport. On March 6, 1951 their trial began in New Yorks Southern District federal court. I find innocence quite a difficult word to use with Ethel, she says. The trial lasted for nearly one month. His arrest began a chain of investigations, which ultimately led to the arrest of Julius and Ethel. 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. Julius and Ethels children, Michael and Robert, maintain that their mother was innocent and have created anonline petitionto exonerate her. The minutes count. Julius Rosenberg was a key Soviet spy who passed along information to the Soviet Union and recruited Manhattan Project spies. Robert wrote a later memoir, An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey (2003). As a young attorney in 1951, Cohn pushed for the execution of Meeropol's grandparents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges. Robert and his brother, Michael, asked president Obama to pardon their mother. There are some conflicting assessments among historians regarding the outcome of the Rosenberg trial. They continue to campaign for Ethel to be posthumously legally exonerated. He was U.S. citizen and electrical engineer. They were the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War. He also stated that he believed Ethel was only guilty of being Julius wife and was not an active participant in the espionage ring. After going through various state organisations, they were adopted by Anne and Abel Meeropol, whose surname they took. 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. He then claimed that he passed this information to Julius on a New York street corner, and that Ethel was not involved. Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted, as were David Greenglass and Anatoli Yakovlev. Timeline of Events Relating to the Rosenberg Trial. And the newspapers reported that because she was tougher, she needed more of a jolt. But when he was arrested, his wifes arrest also followed soon after, although there was no proof of any active espionage involvement on her part. Many Americans, however, believed that the Rosenbergs had been dealt with justly. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, orig. Another conspirator, Morton Sobell, a college classmate of Julius Rosenberg, fled to Mexico but was extradited. [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. He opened thetrial by stating: The evidence will show that the loyalty and alliance of the Rosenbergs and Sobell were not to our country, but that it was to Communism. In May 1951, Pablo Picasso wrote for the communist French newspaper L'Humanit, "The hours count. 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