The Execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg : June 19, 1953

(image: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, separated by heavy wire screen as they leave US Court House after being found guilty by the jury) 

On this day June 19, 1953: At the peak of McCarthyist anti-communist hysteria, the US government executed Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for spying for the Soviet Union.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were both born in New York City and had similar interests. Ethel was born Ethel Greenglass in Manhattan to a Jewish family on September 28, 1915. Julius was born to a family of Jewish immigrants on May 12, 1918. Julius and Ethel joined the Young Communist League (YCL) shortly after finishing high school. 

Through their membership with the YCL, Julius and Ethel met in 1936. They married three years later and had two sons Ethel was employed by the National New York Packing and Shipping Company as a secretary after graduating high school in 1931. Julius attended the City College of New York, where he received a degree in electrical engineering. After he graduated, Julius joined the US Army Signal Corps in 1940 as a civilian engineer and later became an inspector.

Julius left the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) in 1942 to prevent any potential suspicions about his involvement. Due to the tensions between the US and the Soviet Union following World War II, a period known as the Cold War, any associations with the Communist Party raised red flags for individuals employed by the US government. Party of the USA (CPUSA) in 1942 to prevent any potential suspicions about his involvement. 

The arrest of the Rosenbergs was set in motion when the FBI arrested Klaus Fuchs, a British scientist who gave atomic secrets to the Soviets while working on the Manhattan project to develop the U.S. atomic bomb,  Fuchs's arrest and confession led to the arrest of Harry Gold, a courier for Soviet spies. Gold in turn led investigators to David Greenglass, a small-time spy and a former army sergeant and machinist at Los Alamos, the secret atomic bomb lab in New Mexico. Greenglass, who himself had confessed to providing nuclear secrets to the Soviets through an intermediary,  then accused his sister Ethel and brother-in-law Julius of controlling his activities.This led  to Julius Rosenberg being 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. Ethel was arrested two months later. Greenglass testified against his sister and brother-in-law in court. He later served 10 years in prison. In the intervening decades, it has since been conclusively proved that David Greenglass committed perjury against his own sister. 

Ethel Rosenberg’s Jewish identity was forged not by any ties to traditional Judaism but by her political radicalism. Indeed, when she and her husband, Julius, were charged with espionage, attempts were made by their fellow "leftists" to link their prosecution with antisemitism. But the established Jewish community, fearing any association with Jewish radicalism, rejected this charge. 

A brief trial  began on March 6, 1951, and attracted much media attention, and the trial took place as the US government was launching its Cold War against the USSR. This campaign sought to demonize the Soviet Union and communists, to cancel out the great prestige of the Soviet Union during the Second World War, and to turn back the worldwide surge toward national liberation and socialism. On the domestic front, anti-communism reached a fever pitch in the Rosenberg trial and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts. 

A concerted effort was made by McCarthy, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and others to paint U.S. communists as Soviet spies seeking to overturn the “American way of life.” The real goal was to wipe out the gains made under the New Deal in social legislation and to weaken the labor movement. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were victims of this anti-communist hysteria, a hysteria that made it impossible for them to get a fair trial

Julius and Ethel maintained their innocence throughout the trial by asserting their Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to answer questions. This was a tactic to prevent incrimination upon themselves. Refusal to answer questions about their involvement with the Communist Party during a period of heightened espionage paranoia caused many to quickly label them as spies based on the popular belief that all Communist members were Soviet spies.

In the months between the sentencing and execution, criticism of the trial grew more strident, and major demonstrations were held. Nobel Prize winner Jean-Paul Sartre called the case "a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation."

On April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death and the pair was taken to Sing Sing to await execution. The Rosenbergs were the first U.S. citizens to be convicted and executed for espionage for espionage and the first to receive such an extreme penalty during peacetime years. and their case remains controversial to this day. There were protest marches held across the world.

Ethel's refusal to fulfill a stereotypical feminine role by breaking into tears during the trial was thought to show that she was unwomanly and more attached to Communism than to her children. Her stoicism may have helped to turn the jury of 11 men and one woman against her. 

The global political context was also a clear factor. In pronouncing their death sentence, Judge Irving Kaufman described the Rosenbergs' crime as "worse than murder ... causing the communist aggression in Korea," thus blaming them for the Korean War. 

 Wrongful execution happens regardless of factual innocence when the state denies a defendant due process. Also, punishment should be proportionate to the crime. In the Rosenberg case, the prosecution engaged in ex parte communications with the judge. The prosecution suborned perjury from its key witness, David Greenglass. The judge refused to permit testimony from experts who called into dispute the value of the information Greenglass passed to Julius Rosenberg. The judge imposed capital punishment, which should have been the province of the jury. 

The death penalty in the case rested on the premise that the Rosenbergs passed nuclear technology to the Soviet Union, thus endangering millions of lives. The prosecution portrayed the Rosenbergs as responsible for the Korean Police Action. The Rosenbergs were the victims of a propaganda campaign to justify the death penalty.

The government undoubtedly expected Julius Rosenberg to yield to pressure and give up information. When he didn’t, the government arrested Ethel to increase the pressure. The bluff failed when the Rosenbergs continued in their refusal to cooperate.  

The conviction and sentence were followed by a lengthy series of appeals. During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. 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. Other  Americans, however, believed that the Rosenbergs had been dealt with justly.

Although a number of leftist organizations protested the verdict, Jewish organizations were conspicuously absent in the Rosenbergs' defense. Public condemnation of the Rosenbergs, a general identification of Jews with left-wing causes, and the shadow of McCarthyism made many Jews fear that their own loyalty was under scrutiny. Some Jewish leaders, including the American Jewish Committee, publicly endorsed the guilty verdict. They agreed with President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he issued a statement declining to invoke executive clemency for the pair. 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. The execution of two human beings is a grave matter. But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.”

Following failed pleas for clemency to President Truman and then to President Eisenhower and affirming their innocence to the end, the Rosenbergs were cruelly executed on June 19, 1953.On the morning of their execution, the Rosenbergs wrote in a letter addressed to their two sons: “We were innocent and could not wrong our conscience.To the end, both Rosenbergs insisted on their innocence. On the day, Ethel’s execution was botched. 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. There was international outrage at her death. 

Their children  Michael and Robby Rosenberg were 10 and six respectively when their parents were executed. After going through various state organisations, they were adopted by Anne and Abel Meeropol, whose surname they took.Their sons later sued the government to release files related to the case and, in 2015, petitioned President Obama to exonerate their mother, Ethel. Debate over this case continues today.And Robby and his wife created the Rosenberg Fund, to help the needs of children whose parents have suffered because of their progressive activities and who, therefore, are no longer able to provide fully for their children .https://www.rfc.org/

It must also be remembered that, although the Rosenbergs were communists and spies, they did not spy for an enemy of the United States, as the sentence might indicate, but rather for its wartime ally and  it is difficult, however, to imagine the execution of a married couple without understanding of the hysteria that the Cold War produced.At the end of the day. depending on whose side the spy is spying for, and whose nation suffers from the spying, spies are seen as heroes or villains.  There is no middle of the road in the spy game.   

The release of classified information such as the Venona files, along with information made available after the collapse of the Soviet Union, show that  although Julius Rosenberg was probably guilty, Ethel's role in any conspiracy was tiny at most. Julius's KGB handler indicated that Rosenberg’s most valuable information was a proximity fuse. Julius Rosenberg passed no valuable nuclear technology to the Soviet Union.

Julius Rosenberg should have served a sentence for his espionage that was comparable to the sentences of other people in the spy ring. Ethel Rosenberg should never have been arrested, charged, and tried, let alone executed. 

While scholarly debate over the Rosenberg case continues, their names remain a touchstone for many. Playwright Tony Kushner, for instance, offered a powerful portrayal of Ethel Rosenberg's strength and humanity in his landmark production Angels in America. Heir to an Execution (2004), a recent documentary by the Rosenbergs' granddaughter, Ivy Meeropol, presents a particularly moving portrayal of how Ethel confronted her arrest, trial and execution.