[Madstrider]

Reading what Ethel Rosenberg said ....I just see her as a Susan Sarandon type. Stubborn and trying to get the gov't into martyring her for the *cause*

The government indicted Ethel, hoping she'd testify against Julius, or that Julius would confess, to spare her. What the government underestimated was the depth of the Rosenbergs' commitment to Communism. Ron Radosh wrote a book about the Rosenbergs, and showed that the Rosenbergs went to their death fully conscious of their status as "martyrs" for the Communist cause.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Ethel Rosenberg's own response was quite different: "the great democratic United States," she said, "is proposing the savage destruction of a small, unoffending Jewish family." When, on the eve of the execution, the United States marshal told her that her final appeal had been denied and the death sentence would be carried out in a matter of hours, she added: "the Rosenbergs will be the first victims of American fascism."

AEI link

Very dramatic. However, all's they had to do was confess...but they didn't. They made a decision together to be martyrs. They didn't have to be. In the process their sons suffered for their selfishness/stubbornness/committment to a faux phony idealistic cause called Communism.