A month later, Ethel was seized by the FBI and charged. She called Michael at home and told him that she, like his father, had been arrested. Like a lot of Jews, they became interested in the movement in the s when it seemed like a means to fight against fascism.
Unlike many others, they stuck with it after the Soviet Union and Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact , ostensibly, if not officially, allying the countries.
As a historian, Sebba has built up a reputation for writing in particular about women, such as Wallis Simpson. The Rosenbergs are almost invariably discussed as a duo, but as her sons have slowly realised, and as Sebba shows in her book, their stories were very different. While Julius had a close relationship with his mother, Sophie, Ethel and her mother, Tessie, had a difficult one. Tessie favoured David, the baby of the family, and for Ethel, communism was a means of educating herself and separating herself from her mother.
David worked as a machinist for 18 months at the Los Alamos atomic weapons laboratory. He was arrested when he was identified as part of a chain that passed on secrets about the technology to the Soviets. David quickly admitted his guilt, and his lawyer advised him that the best thing he could do for himself, and to give his wife immunity, would be to turn in someone else.
Then the Rosenbergs were arrested. The FBI believed that Julius was a kingpin who recruited Americans to spy against their own country, and that he had used David to pass on secrets of the atomic bomb to the Russians.
Initially, David testified that his sister had not been involved in any espionage. However, his wife, Ruth, said that Ethel had typed up the information David had given Julius to pass on to the Soviets. But for the purpose of acting as a deterrent, I think it is very important that she be convicted, too, and given a stiff sentence.
Because he had given names, David was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and ended up serving nine. Ruth was free to stay home and look after their children. The Rosenbergs, who insisted they were innocent, were found guilty. Judge Irving Kaufman carefully considered their sentence. Hoover, aware of the tenuousness of the case against Ethel, and how it would look if America executed a young mother, urged against the death sentence for her, but Cohn argued for it and won.
But is that true, or just a nephew who wants to expose the people who lied about my parents? They constantly question their own memories of the past.
But is that just fantasy? Ethel has long been portrayed as a cold woman, one who, as Kaufman said in his sentencing , loved communism more than her children. In reality, as Sebba reveals in her book, she was a particularly devoted mother, with a progressive interest in child psychology. Signed Winston Churchill. This reply was handed to the deputation at midnight, and the gates of Chartwell were closed for the night. In London, fifty demonstrators who had earlier stated they intended to keep an all-night vigil at No.
At one o'clock this morning in Manchester a crowd of two hundred stood quietly outside the offices of the "Manchester Guardian" waiting for news of the Rosenberg executions. The crowd stood in silence until the executions were announced at 1. The news was received in silence, and members of the crowd, most of them men, maintained a two minutes' silence for the Rosenbergs. Afterwards they moved off to the steps of the Royal Exchange in Cross Street where the meeting pledged itself to continue the fight to clear the name of the Rosenbergs and "to pin the blame where it rightly belongs.
A telegram sent earlier to the Queen had asked her to use her influence towards securing a reprieve. Execution of the Rosenbergs — archive, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg during their trial for espionage in New York, Photograph: AP. Eisenhower's statement The last hope of reprieve for the Rosenbergs vanished early this afternoon when President Eisenhower rejected a final appeal for clemency shortly after the Supreme Court had set aside the stay of execution granted by Justice Douglas, one of its own members on Monday.
Built in an English shipyard and sold to the Confederates in , the Alabama was a state-of-the-art ship— After 14 Formula One race car drivers withdraw due to safety concerns over the Michelin-made tires on their vehicles, German driver Michael Schumacher wins a less-than-satisfying victory at the United States Grand Prix on June 19, The race, held at the Indianapolis Motor The second son of Live TV.
This Day In History. History Vault. Civil Rights Movement. Art, Literature, and Film History. Sign Up. US Politics. World War II. Kaufman opened the proceedings by declaring: "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. The case against the Rosenbergs largely hinged on the testimonies of Gold and Greenglass. Greenglass testified that the Rosenbergs began lobbying his wife, Ruth, to get her husband involved in the espionage ring by November He returned to New York City on furlough in January , at which point he showed Julius his notes and a sketch of a high-explosive lens.
Even more damning, Greenglass described another meeting at the Rosenbergs' New York City apartment in September , during which time Ethel typed up his shoddy, hastily scribbled notes. To this point, the government's case against Ethel was largely nonexistent; now, her brother had portrayed her as a willing co-conspirator. Chief prosecutor Irving H. Saypol leaped all over this account, dramatically telling the jury how she "sat at that typewriter and struck the keys, blow by blow, against her own country in the interests of the Soviets.
Julius and Ethel took the stand in their defense, but other than denying the charges, they largely evoked the Fifth Amendment on matters of espionage and their involvement in the Communist Party, their silence amplifying the testimony against them. On March 29, , the jury returned a verdict of guilty against the trio charged. Judge Kaufman imposed the death penalty on Julius and Ethel, telling them, "I consider your crimes worse than murder.
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