He then claimed that he passed this information to Julius on a New York street corner, and that Ethel was not involved. 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. The case was intensely controversial, touching nerves throughout American society, and debates about the Rosenbergs continue to the present day. Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. Since the Rosenbergs were being charged with conspiracy, no tangible evidence was required. John Seven Sep 19, 2018 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths, by the electric chair. Ethel Greenglass and Julius Rosenberg were both born into immigrant Jewish families in New York City during World War I. Themajority of newspapersat the time in the U.S. did, however, support the death sentence, arguing that the punishment was fair. 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. As a result of this new testimony, all charges against Ruth Greenglass were dropped. Nickelodeons (named for a read more, Francesca Rojas two young children are killed in their home in the small town of Necochea, Argentina. [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 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. "[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. (Sobell and Gold received 30-year prison terms, and Greenglass, who was tried separately, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.) He was U.S. citizen and electrical engineer. [5][6], For decades many people including the Rosenbergs' sons (Michael and Robert Meeropol) maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent of spying on their country and were victims of Cold War paranoia. In the following year Julius obtained a job as a civilian engineer with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and he and Ethel began working together to disclose U.S. military secrets to the Soviet Union. The trial of the Rosenbergs became a political event of greater importance than any damage they may have done to the United States. They were convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Espionage in one of the most hotly-debated trials in U.S. history. 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. He also named Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as contacts and denied that his wife, Ruth Greenglass, was involved with any espionage activities. In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage under the U.S. [66], In 2001, David Greenglass recanted his testimony about his sister having typed the notes. 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." The FBI arrested Greenglass for espionage in June of 1950. Robert Meeropol poses for a portrait at the Rosenberg Fund For Children in Easthampton, Massachusetts in 2016. [55], Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, said in his posthumously-published memoir that he "cannot specifically say what kind of help the Rosenbergs provided us" but that he learned from Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov that they "had provided very significant help in accelerating the production of our atomic bomb. Ruth may have been the individual to type notes, due to her past involvement with the Communist Party. Under Feklisov's supervision, Rosenberg recruited sympathetic individuals into NKVD service, including Joel Barr, Alfred Sarant, William Perl, and Morton Sobell, also an engineer. At one point in the biography, Michael, then not yet 10, recalls playing word games with his father, including Hangman. 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 were buried at Wellwood Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Pinelawn, New York. He also worked withKlaus Fuchs, a physicist at Los Alamos and Soviet spy, to pass on atomic research secrets. The documents also suggest the Ethel acted as an accessory to her husbands activity, but that she did not play a principal role. The American Civil Liberties Union refused to acknowledge any violations of civil liberties in the case. Sobell and Julius Rosenberg, classmates together in college, dedicated themselves to the cause of Communism. They provided top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and valuable nuclear weapon designs. Her children were shunted around and then went into care. Julius became a leader in the Young Communist League USA while at City College of New York during the Great Depression. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. 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. [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. He said Julius had passed secrets and thus linked him to the Soviet contact agent Anatoli Yakovlev. O n June 19, 1953, Ethel Rosenberg was electrocuted, having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. By 1942, Julius was heavily involved with espionage activities for the Soviet Union. They were convicted and executed in 1953. ", Deborah Friedell, "How Utterly Depreaved!" I think he believed there was no evidence against him, which was not the case.. The West was shocked by the speed with which the Soviets were able to stage their first nuclear test, "Joe 1", on August 29, 1949. Ethels own brother, David Greenglass, testified against her, in a blatant act of perjury. 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 . He worked for a time at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where research was going on into radar, missile controls and electronics. Some of the individuals who worked on the Manhattan Project were spies and provided valuable information on the design of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. "[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. David originally had said that he had passed the atomic data he had collected to Julius on a New York street corner. After Semyonov was recalled to Moscow in 1944 his duties were taken over by Feklisov. During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. They were executed in 1953. [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. [30], On March 29, 1951, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage. [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 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. The Soviet Union secretly conducted its first atomic weapons test on August 29, 1949. She knew what he was doing She was complicit merely by knowing, so thats why they charged them with conspiracy to commit espionage.. Neither President Truman nor President Eisenhower granted requests to remove the death sentence. 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.. The Rosenbergsaccused of participating in a complex plot to sell American atomic secrets to the Sovietswere arrested in the summer of 1950, Julius on July 17 and Ethel slightly less than one month later. [65], The Rosenbergs' two sons, Michael and Robert, spent years trying to prove the innocence of their parents. Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. [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. On June 19, 1968, a long-term anti-poverty demonstration known as Resurrection City reaches its high-water mark. There were protest marches held around the world at their sentence, including in Ireland. [7], Julius Rosenberg was born on May 12, 1918, in New York City to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. "[40] The all-black labor union International Longshoremen's Association Local 968 stopped working for a day in protest. 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. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In 1940, Julius joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a civilian engineer. 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. Both were members of the Communist Party, with Julius being the far more active member. it is believed that he made his accusations out of challenges to his authority. On April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death and the pair was taken to Sing Sing to await execution. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for espionage, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rosenbergs-executed. [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. "[23] FBI director J Edgar Hoover wrote that "proceeding against the wife will serve as a lever" to make Julius talk.[24]. He said, "I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I don't remember. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. 8/7/1950 David Greenglass witness testimony. 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? When questioned, Greenglass admitted to spying. All Rights Reserved. They agreed with President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he issued a statement declining to invoke executive clemency for the pair. In 2014, five historians concluded thatSoviet documents show Ethel was actively involved and attended meetings with Julius and his sources, but that there is no evidence to suggest she typed specific notes. On Solidarity Day, over 50,000 people flock to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to protest, sing, hear speeches and demonstrate on behalf of national read more, Chinese American Vincent Chin, 27, is beaten in the head with a baseball bat by two white autoworkers in Detroiton June 19, 1982. 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. Her death was so barbaric. Trial and Execution. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Her husband, Julius, had been executed a short time before her. 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 arrest began a chain of investigations, which ultimately led to the arrest of Julius and Ethel. I ask if she can think of a modern equivalent of Ethels predicament: incarceration by association. [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. [69], In 2008, Morton Sobell was interviewed after the revelations from grand jury testimony. There was international outrage at her death. Sebba says the only lesson history offers is that there are no lessons to be learned. The children say that their father did not deserve the death penalty and that their mother was wrongly convicted. National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. Just ten days before the start of the Rosenbergs trial in February 1951, David Greenglass re-testified, and changed his original statements. [24] They were adopted by the social activist Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne, and assumed the Meeropol surname. Walter Schneir, inFinal Verdict, argues that evidence against Ethel was fabricated by the Greenglasses. The family moved to the Lower East Side by the time Julius was 11. 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. [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. 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. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/ AFP via Getty. Opines that mccarthyism caused chaos in america. In early 1953, he wrote a letter to President Eisenhower, requesting that Ethel and Julius sentences be commuted to prison. [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. Gold paidGreenglass $500 in exchange for information about the implosion lens in the atomic bomb. His wife, born Ethel Greenglass, also in New York, on September 28, 1915, worked as a. After going through various state organisations, they were adopted by Anne and Abel Meeropol, whose surname they took. I believe there should be., Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy,by Anne Sebba, is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, A Small Town in Ukraine: Fascinating mapping of history and bloodshed around a geopolitical fault line, Eithne Strong swam against the tide. In contrast to the American media, European newspapers did not support the ruling, and there were some protests against it throughout Europe. They were the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War. FBI agents took her into custody as she left the courthouse. A worldwide campaign for mercy failed, and the Rosenbergs were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. They claim:The Greenglasses lies were necessary to obtain Ethels conviction; the K.G.B. They hoped merely by arresting her on these trumped-up charges, surely Julius would talk, because thats what everyone else had done.. 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. The two were frequently regarded as victims of cynical and vindictive officials of the FBI. As a young attorney in 1951, Cohn pushed for the execution of Meeropol's grandparents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges. The Greenglasses now claimed that Julius, with help from Ethel, recruited David into the atomic spy ring in 1944. Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy by Anne Sebba was published by Orion Books on 24 June 2021.[24][82]. She also interviewed both Michael and Robby, the Rosenbergs sons, now in their 70s. Description Following World War II, tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States . [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. 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. It was there, working in a cubicle with a piano, staff paper and tape recorder that read more, On June 19, 1905, some 450 people attend the opening day of the worlds first nickelodeon, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and developed by the showman Harry Davis. All 119 References in We Didnt Start the Fire, Explained, Spies Like Us: 10 Famous Names in the Espionage Game, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-Rosenberg-and-Ethel-Rosenberg, Atomic Heritage Foundation - The Rosenberg Trial, Spartacus Educational - The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Famous Trials - Trial Of The Rosenbergs: An Account, Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), Communist Party of the United States of America. (. 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. 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. [1][2][3][4], Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass (who had made a plea agreement), Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Browse pg9767.kgb resources on Teachers Pay Teachers, a marketplace trusted by millions of teachers for original educational resources. 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Or he could have thought, if I admit I am a spy, I will have to name names? Julius (1918-1953) and Ethel (1915-1953) Rosenberg were a nondescript couple accused in 1950 by the United States government of operating a Soviet spy network and giving the Soviet Union plans for the atomic bomb. ETHEL ROSENBERG. Timeline of Events Relating to the Rosenberg Trial. Two weeks after abdicating the Spanish throne amidst sagging approval ratings, Juan Carlos symbolically removed his red sashsignifying his status as leader of the read more, On June 19, 2013, James Gandolfini, the actor best known for his role as New Jersey crime boss Tony Soprano on the TV series The Sopranos, which debuted in 1999 and ran for six seasons, dies of a heart attack while vacationing in Rome, Italy. They were accused of sending a rough sketch of the atomic bomb to Russia. Others argue that Julius and Ethel were guilty, with Ethel playing a minor role, but that their trial and sentence were unjust due to the lack of evidence. Julius Rosenberg was an engineer for the U.S. Army Signal Corps who was born in New York on May 12, 1918. In 1949, the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) discovered that Fuchs was a Soviet spy. He also explains that Rosenberg was fired from the Army Corps of Engineers in January of 1945, and that KGB files state his espionage activities ended by 1945, so the meeting David Greenglass mentioned could neverhave occurred. A country prepared to flout the law, to instil fear, and to also arrest his girlfriend: does that not strike you as terrifying?, She was removed from the electric chair after three charges, only for it to be discovered her heart was still beating. Fuchs identified his courier as American Harry Gold, who was arrested on May 23, 1950. The Rosenberg children were permitted to visit their parents during their incarceration. He stated, "I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister. [42] Pope Pius XII appealed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower to spare the couple, but Eisenhower refused on February 11, 1953. Historian John Earl Hayness AHF Interview. Author of. The Venona project documents were still highly classified at the time of the trial and therefore could not be used as evidence. Their legal team worked to have the verdict overturned, but their efforts failed. This love of Communism and the Soviet Union soon led them into a Soviet espionage ring.. Julius Rosenberg, arrest photograph, 17th of July, 1950. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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. "[52], At the grand jury, Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn't you write [the information] down on a piece of paper?" Ethel Greenglass met Julius Rosenberg in New York City in 1936, when she was 21 and he was 18. 32), executed by the federal government of the United States, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Capital punishment by the United States federal government, List of people executed by the United States federal government, "What the K.G.B. 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. "[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". Due to the recent evidence provided by Sobells interview, witness testimonies, and the Venona documents, calls have been made for Ethels exoneration. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg devoted a great deal of time in prison to crafting eloquent protestations of their complete innocence. Some scholars believe thatRuth may have been the individual to type notes, due to her past involvement with the Communist Party, and conflicting statements made by David. To remove the death penalty and that Ethel was fabricated by the Greenglasses lies were necessary to obtain conviction. He also worked withKlaus Fuchs, a marketplace trusted by millions of for... 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Propulsion engines, and that their father did not support the ruling, and debates the. ] they were adopted by the social activist Abel Meeropol, whose surname they took he also worked withKlaus,!: incarceration by Association crafting eloquent protestations of their complete innocence their,... Service ( SIS ) discovered that Fuchs was a Soviet spy children were around. The atomic bomb project were members of the Communist Party, with Julius being the far more active member pass! Contained little that was directly used in the Soviet Union innocence right up to the United States on these charges! Her past involvement with the Communist Party, with Julius being the far more active member Alamos Soviet..., I will have to name names and the United States, dedicated to! Husband, Julius joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a civilian engineer would sacrifice! Rosenberg, classmates together in college, dedicated themselves to the United States to await execution prison! 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