Posted on 06/17/2003 11:50:51 AM PDT by DPB101
OSSINING, N.Y. (AP)--Pete Seeger was in New York City's Union Square in 1953 along with 5,000 other supporters of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as the hour of the couple's execution drew near.
``We were waiting and hoping Eisenhower would give a last-minute reprieve,'' says Seeger, now 84.
``We learned that wouldn't happen, and then a great sigh, a great wail went up from the crowd when the time came and we knew they'd been executed.''
On the 50th anniversary of the execution Thursday, Seeger, Susan Sarandon, Harry Belafonte and other show business activists will appear at a benefit for the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which assists children of people imprisoned, attacked or fired for taking a public stand.
Robert Meeropol, the Rosenbergs' younger son, who runs the fund, calls it his ``constructive revenge.''
The execution of the Rosenbergs in the electric chair at Sing Sing on June 19, 1953, ended one of the most sensational cases of the McCarthy era. It was the first execution of civilians for espionage in U.S. history.
The Rosenbergs were arrested in 1950, accused of relaying to the Soviet Union secrets of the atomic bomb. They allegedly recruited Mrs. Rosenberg's brother, David Greenglass, who worked at the site of the first atom bomb test in New Mexico. Greenglass became a star witness against the Rosenbergs, testifying that he saw his sister transcribing his spy notes on a typewriter.
The judge who passed sentence, Irving Kaufman, told the Rosenbergs their actions had led to the Korean War and all its casualties, and added: ``Millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason.''
There were appeals, stays of execution and pleas for mercy from Pope Pius XII and Albert Einstein.
Morton Sobell, who was convicted with the Rosenbergs but spared the death penalty, was at Alcatraz when a guard told him they had been put to death.
``My emotions had already been hardened by the prison life,'' says Sobell, 86, who served 18 years.
``But the guard was kindhearted about it and even my fellow inmates knew it was like someone from my family had been killed.''
Meeropol, who was 6 at the time and was known then as Robbie Rosenberg, recalls: ``We were watching a ball game on television when trailers started coming across the screen about the scheduled execution. The adults sent us outside to play so we wouldn't see the news accounts and we played catch until it was too dark to see the ball. My parents had been killed right around sunset.''
A year and a half ago, Greenglass announced that he lied about the typewriter--and some other matters--to save himself and his wife.
While decoded Soviet messages released in recent years appear to show that Julius Rosenberg was indeed a spy, supporters say nothing he contributed to the Soviets--and certainly nothing his wife did--warranted the electric chair.
Meeropol's memoir, ``An Execution in the Family'' is being published on the anniversary. In it, he recounts his vague memories of Rosenberg family life; his and his brother's adoption by Abel and Anne Meeropol; his own studies of his parents' case, which opened him to the possibility they may have been spies; and his difficulty in understanding why parents of small children would engage in such risk.
But Meeropol is also suspicious that recently released evidence may be government ``disinformation.''
``What a horror story it would be for me to accept it and then later find out that I've spread their propaganda for them,'' he says. ``I couldn't live with myself.''
``My bottom line, instead, is that the United States government executed two people for doing something they knew those people didn't do.''
On the Net:
Rosenberg Fund for Children: http://www.rfc.org
It must be nice to live in a world where one can simply dismiss any information they don't like as disinformation.
As someone who works in the defense indistry, I can testify that it matters not even one iota what I think about the importance of classified information and how it might affect the world's balance of power, period. That is not my decision to make, and it wasn't the Rosenberg's decision to make back then. Something that on its face might look totally harmless can be pieced together with other information that can lead to people getting killed. They got exactly what they deserved, and so does anyone who betrays their oath to their country.
Try to arrange for a hitman to kill somebody. It won't matter if he's successful or just an undercover cop; the caller will still be guilty of attempting to have someone murdered.
Funniest thing I've read in a long time. Hope some liberals are lurking. Comments such as yours cause blood vessels in their brains to burst.
Wish AP would get its headlines right. "Activists" are not at this memorial. Communists are. Communists who supported genocidal maniacs, who hate America, who hate Christians, who hate liberty, who hate everyting good, decent and honest are there. Would AP call a group honoring Hitler's birthday "activists?" There is no moral difference between those fanatics and the Meeropol/Rosenberg RAT admirers.
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| Mon Jun 16,12:24 PM ET |
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Robert Meeropol, the youngest son of American communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, at age 2. The Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953, accused of helping the Soviet Union during World War Two in its race to make the atomic bomb. Meeropol's new book, 'An Execution in the Family, One Son's Journey' will be published on June 19, the 50th anniversary of the executions. (Reuters - Handout) |
In the Spring of 1943 [Yup, 1943 - the Trinity Test had not even happened], via Lend-Lease, tens of tons of nuclear material - including enriched uranium - was sent to the USSR.
The director of the Lend-Lease Program at the time - one Harry "The Hop" Hopkins - FDR's alter ego. Note that Hopkins, via the Venona Project decrypts, has been determined to have been a Soviet agent.
Bwahaha...What ya drinkin', I'm buying.
The Rosenburgs were just the first salvo in what became the Cold War. A Rosenburg fund for children strike me the same as "Nazi Youth". How quickly these Hollywood wackos forget what was endured by their grandparents in order for them to spew the psychobable bu!!$#!# that they come up with.
If I am wrong and Rosenburg went the way of Noble then I apologize to those who I offend but in my eyes the Rosenburgs betrayed the country, my country, in ways that cannot be fathomed by the youth of this nation even with the most careful explanation. They created a realm of fear that endured until the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90's.
Personally Sarandon and Belafontass support for this does not surprise me since people like this are only satisfied if there is mass suffering. Only if there is mass suffering, is there a "cause" for them to jump on and only then are they "significant". But to quote the Dixie Chicks "I am ashamed that they are......Americans"
Damn, I think I just misquoted the PIG.
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