Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Mugshot of Julius Rosenberg

In January 1950, the U.S. discovered that Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee and theoretical physicist working for the British mission in the Manhattan Project, had given key documents to the Soviets throughout the war. Fuchs identified his courier as American Harry Gold, who was arrested on May 23, 1950.[17]

On June 15, 1950, David Greenglass was arrested by the FBI for espionage and soon confessed to having passed secret information on to the USSR through Gold. 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. He said Julius had passed secrets and thus linked him to the Soviet contact agent Anatoli Yakovlev. This connection would be necessary as evidence if there was to be a conviction for espionage of the Rosenbergs.[18][19]

On July 17, 1950, Julius Rosenberg was arrested on suspicion of espionage[20] based on David Greenglass's confession. On August 11, 1950, Ethel Rosenberg was arrested after testifying before a grand jury (see section, below).[19]

Another conspirator, Morton Sobell, fled with his family to Mexico City after Greenglass was arrested. They took assumed names and he tried to figure out a way to reach Europe without a passport. Abandoning that effort, he returned to Mexico City. 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. forces.[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.[22]

Mugshot of Ethel Rosenberg, arrested during grand jury proceedings

Twenty senior government officials met secretly on February 8, 1950, to discuss the Rosenberg case. 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." 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."[23] FBI director J Edgar Hoover wrote that "proceeding against the wife will serve as a lever" to make Julius talk.[24]

Their case against Ethel Rosenberg was resolved 10 days before the start of the trial, when David and Ruth Greenglass were interviewed a second time. They were persuaded to change their original stories. David originally had said that he had passed the atomic data he had collected to Julius on a New York street corner. After being interviewed this second time, he said that he had given this information to Julius in the living room of the Rosenbergs' New York apartment. Ethel, at Julius's request, had taken his notes and "typed them up." 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.

As a result of this new testimony, all charges against Ruth Greenglass were dropped.[25]

On August 11, Ethel Rosenberg testified before a grand jury. For all questions, she asserted her right to not answer as provided by the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. FBI agents took her into custody as she left the courthouse. 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. The request was denied.[26] Julius and Ethel were put under pressure to incriminate others involved in the spy ring. Neither offered any further information. On August 17, the grand jury returned an indictment alleging 11 overt acts. Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted, as were David Greenglass and Anatoli Yakovlev.[27]

David Greenglass's sketch of an implosion-type nuclear weapon design, illustrating what he allegedly gave the Rosenbergs to pass on to the Soviet Union

The trial of the Rosenbergs and Sobell on federal espionage charges began on March 6, 1951, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. 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.[28][29] The prosecution's primary witness, David Greenglass, said that he turned over to Julius Rosenberg a sketch of the cross-section of an implosion-type atom bomb. This was the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, as opposed to a bomb with the "gun method" triggering device used in the "Little Boy" bomb dropped on Hiroshima.[30]

On March 29, 1951, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage. 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.[32]

Prosecutor Roy Cohn later claimed that his influence led to both Kaufman and Saypol being appointed to the Rosenberg case, and that Kaufman imposed the death penalty based on Cohn's personal recommendation. 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.[33]

In imposing the death penalty, Kaufman noted that he held the Rosenbergs responsible not only for espionage but for American deaths in the Korean War:[34]

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.

The U.S. government offered to spare the lives of both Julius and Ethel if Julius provided the names of other spies and they admitted their guilt. The Rosenbergs made a public statement: "By asking us to repudiate the truth of our innocence, the government admits its own doubts concerning our guilt...we will not be coerced, even under pain of death, to bear false witness".[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. A campaign was started to try to prevent the couple's execution. Between the trial and the executions, there were widespread protests and claims of antisemitism; the charges of antisemitism were widely believed abroad, but not among the vast majority in the United States. At a time when American fears about communism were high, the Rosenbergs did not receive support from mainstream Jewish organizations. The American Civil Liberties Union refused to acknowledge any violations of civil liberties in the case.[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 Pope Pius XII. President Eisenhower, supported by public opinion and the media at home, ignored the overseas demands.[36]

Jean-Paul Sartre, a Marxist existentialist philosopher and writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, described the trial as, "...a legal lynching..."[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.[39] Einstein and Urey pleaded with President Truman to pardon the Rosenbergs. In May 1951, Pablo Picasso wrote for the communist French newspaper L'Humanité "The hours count. The minutes count. Do not let this crime against humanity take place."[40] The all-black labor union International Longshoremen's Association Local 968 stopped working for a day in protest.[41] Cinema artists such as Fritz Lang registered their protest.[42] Pope Pius XII appealed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower to spare the couple, but Eisenhower refused on February 11, 1953. All other appeals were also unsuccessful.[43][44]

The execution was delayed from the scheduled date of June 18 because Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas had granted a stay of execution on the previous day. This stay resulted from intervention in the case by Fyke Farmer, a Tennessee lawyer whose efforts had been scorned by the Rosenbergs' attorney Emanuel Hirsch Bloch.[45]

The execution was scheduled for 11 p.m. the evening of June 19, during the Sabbath, which begins and ends around sunset.[46] Bloch asked for more time, filing a complaint that execution on the Sabbath offended the defendants' Jewish heritage. Rhoda Laks, another attorney on the Rosenbergs' defense team, also made this argument before Judge Kaufman.[47] The defense's strategy backfired. Kaufman, who stated his concerns about executing the Rosenbergs on the Sabbath, rescheduled the execution for 8 p.m.—before sunset and the Sabbath—the regular time for executions at Sing Sing.[48]

On June 19, 1953, Julius died from the first electric shock. Ethel's execution did not go smoothly. 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. Two more electric shocks were applied, and at the conclusion eyewitnesses reported that smoke rose from her head.[49]

The funeral services were held in Brooklyn on June 21. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were buried at Wellwood Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Pinelawn, New York.[46] The Times reported that 500 people attended and 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. Many hundreds of people filed past the biers. 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. 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. Tender. And Intelligent" and the course they took was one of "courage and heroism."

In 1953, socialist historian W.E.B. 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? Red Resurrection? Or Black Despair?"[51]

The Rosenbergs were the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War.[52][53][54]

The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. 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.[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.[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. The cable also makes clear that the sister's husband is involved enough in espionage to have his own codename ("Antenna" and later "Liberal").[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.[65][63][64]

The Venona messages did not feature in the Rosenbergs' trial, which relied instead on testimony from their collaborators, but they heavily informed the U.S. government's overall approach to investigating and prosecuting domestic communists.[66]

Mugshot of David Greenglass, brother of Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and key prosecution witness

In 2001, David Greenglass recanted his testimony about his sister having typed the notes. He said "I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I don't remember."[67] He said he gave false testimony to protect himself and his wife, Ruth, and that he was encouraged by the prosecution to do so. "My wife is more important to me than my sister. Or my mother or my father, OK? And she was the mother of my children."[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. He stated, "I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister."[52]

At the grand jury, Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn't you write [the information] down on a piece of paper?" She replied, "Yes, I wrote [the information] down on a piece of paper and [Julius Rosenberg] took it with him." But at the trial, she testified that Ethel Rosenberg typed notes about the atomic bomb.[68]

Numerous articles were published in 2008 related to the Rosenberg case. Deputy Attorney General of the United States William P. Rogers, who had been part of the prosecution of the Rosenbergs, discussed their strategy at the time in relation to seeking the death sentence for Ethel. He said they had urged the death sentence for Ethel in an effort to extract a full confession from Julius. He reportedly said,"She called our bluff" as she made no effort to push her husband to any action.[69]

Morton Sobell (left), Marshall Perlin, Robert Meeropol, Franz Loeser, April 19, 1976

In September 2008, Morton Sobell was interviewed by The New York Times after the revelations from grand jury testimony. He admitted that he had given documents to the Soviet contact, but said these had to do with defensive radar and weaponry. He confirmed that Julius Rosenberg was "in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information...[on] the atomic bomb," and "He never told me about anything else that he was engaged in."[70]

He said that he thought the hand-drawn diagrams and other atomic-bomb details 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 learned from the other atomic spies. He also said that he believed Ethel Rosenberg was aware of her husband's deeds, but took no part in them.[70]

In a follow-up letter to The New York Times, one week after the first interview was published, 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.[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.[72]

The notebooks make clear that the KGB considered Julius Rosenberg an effective agent and his wife Ethel a supporter of his work.[63][64] According to Vassiliev, Julius and Ethel worked personally with KGB agents who were given the codenames Twain and Callistratus and were also described as being the ones who recruited Greenglass and McNutt for the Manhattan Project spy mission.[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.[65]

Michael Meeropol (2011)

Robert Meeropol (2007)

The Rosenbergs' two sons, Michael and Robert, spent years trying to prove the innocence of their parents. They were orphaned by the executions and were not adopted by their many aunts or uncles, although they initially spent time under the care of their grandmothers and in a children's home.[24] They were adopted by the communist activist Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne and assumed the Meeropol surname.[73][24]

After Morton Sobell's 2008 confession, they acknowledged their father had been involved in espionage, but that in their view 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.[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). Robert wrote the memoir An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey (2003). 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.[74]

Michael's daughter Ivy Meeropol directed a 2004 documentary about her grandparents, Heir to an Execution, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival.[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. The children say that their father did not deserve the death penalty and that their mother was wrongly convicted. They continue to campaign for Ethel to be posthumously legally exonerated.[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, though her innocence is still not proven.[77]

In March 2016, 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.[78] In October 2016, both Michael and Robert Meeropol spoke with Anderson Cooper in an interview which aired on 60 Minutes.[79] In January 2017, Senator Elizabeth Warren sent Obama a letter requesting consideration of the exoneration request.[80][81] In 2021, Ethel's sons restarted the campaign to pardon Ethel as they were optimistic that President Joe Biden will consider this favorably. Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy by Anne Sebba was published by Orion Books on June 24, 2021.[24][82]

• (in French) Florin Aftalion, La Trahison des Rosenberg, JC Lattès, Paris, 2003
• (in French) Howard Fast, Mémoire d'un Rouge, éd. Payot & Rivage. Intéressant, traite de toute la période de l'avant seconde guerre mondiale et après (MacCarthysme, etc.) aux États-Unis. Nombreux témoignages. Plusieurs passages sur les Rosenberg notamment pp. 349 à 359
• (in French) Gérard A. Jaeger, Les Rosenberg. La chaise électrique pour délit d'opinion, Le Félin, 2003
• (in French) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Lettres de la maison de la mort, Gallimard, 1953
• (in French) Morton Sobell, On condamne bien les innocents, Hier et demain, 1974

• Guide to the Playscript about the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Espionage Trial. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

• An Interactive Rosenberg Espionage Ring Timeline and Archive
• Timeline of Events Relating to the Rosenberg Trial.
• Rosenberg trial transcript (excerpts as HTML, and the entire 2,563-page transcript as a PDF file)
• Ethel's brother says he trumped up evidence.
• Documents relating to the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Case, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
• Project Venona messages.
• Rosenberg FBI files (summary only)
• Heir to an Execution – An HBO documentary by Ivy Meeropol, the granddaughter of Ethel and Julius.
• 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 Archived August 28, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
• Annotated bibliography for Julius Rosenberg from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Archived August 28, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
• The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) for Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks
• Rosenberg Son: "My Parents Were Executed Under the Unconstitutional Espionage Act" – video report by Democracy Now!
• History on Trial: The Rosenberg Case in E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine by Santiago Juan-Navarro from The Grove: Working Papers on English Studies, Vol 6, 1999.
• Julius Rosenberg at court sentenced to death
• The WSWS speaks to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s son – An interview with Robert Meeropol
• Ethel Rosenberg on IMDb