Posted on 06/19/2007 11:09:54 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
June 19, 1953 : Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War.
Julius was arrested in July 1950, and Ethel in August of that same year, on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. Specifically, they were accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a brief trial in March 1951 they were convicted. On April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death. The pair was taken to Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, to await execution.
During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. Many people believed that the Rosenbergs were the victims of a surge of hysterical anticommunist feeling in the United States, and protested that the death sentence handed down was cruel and unusual punishment. Most Americans, however, believed that the Rosenbergs had been dealt with justly.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke for many Americans 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."
Julius Rosenberg was the first to be executed, at about 8 p.m. on June 19, 1953. Just a few minutes after his body was removed from the chamber containing the electric chair, Ethel Rosenberg was led in and strapped to the chair. She was pronounced dead at 8:16 p.m. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths. Two sons, Michael and Robert, survived them.
Ah yes... thr good ole days when they really did execute traitors.
I own it.
Appropriately, Julius Rosenberg’s KGB code name was LIBERAL.
Their sons were adopted by a fellow Communist named Abel Meeropol.
He is famous for having written the lyrics to Strange Fruit - a song popularized by Billie Holiday.
Their older son, Michael, is a Marxist professor of economics at Western New England College and a leftwing radio commentator.
Their younger son, Robert, was a leader in the anti-Vietnam movement (he was associated with John Kerry in those days) became the editor of The Socialist Review and is now a criminal defense attorney in MA.
Ivy, Michael's daughter, is a documentary filmmaker who made a film about her family and her grandparents' "moral innocence" entitled Heirs To An Execution. She also made an anti-Bush documentary about Congress entitled The Hill.
Robert's daughter Rachel is an attorney for the Center For Constitutional Rights - a Marxist legal partnership whose best-known partners are the late William Kunstler and Ron Kuby.
I sure am glad the Venona decrypts became available. Lots of liberal myths exploded.
The title should have been Heirs to the Crime of the Century
Don’t forget Klaus Fuchs, who was at the center of the Soviet espionage effort at Los Alamos that included Harry Gold, the Rosenbergs, and others. Fuchs confessed, and he was sentenced by the Brits to 14 years in prison and released after 9 years.
Rotten apples don’t fall very far from the tree.
Would that every similarly dangerous traitor should meet the same fate.
“Some of the happiest days of my life were in that house..”
Because the 50s were the best years in America.
He had two codenames. The other was “Engineer”. And I may be wrong, but wasn’t he, initially, an asset of the GRU doing industrial [especially signals/electronics] espionage?
Throw in Donald McLean, who was the British Embassy liaison with the U.S Atomic Energy program.
She apparently recruited David Greenglass [her brother-in-law] to the ring. He was assigned to the Los Alamos project as a machinist.
Yup. But I thought LIBERAL was more fun.
I’m not sure about the GRU stuff.
Yup. But I thought LIBERAL was more fun.
I’m not sure about the GRU stuff.
from what I’ve read, Julius was the spy. Ethel knew and approved, but wasn’t actively involved. The Feds tried to use her to get to Julius, but she wouldn’t flip, and Julius wouldn’t confess to save her. Both would likely have been spared the electric chair had they admitted guilt. They chose their fate, wanting to die as martyrs.
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