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EXECUTED DEAD GIRLS - ETHEL ROSENBERG

Ethel Rosenberg

1915 - 1953

EXECUTED

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Born September 29, 1915, Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg was raised in a shabby New York City tenement. She became a strong willed and intelligent young woman. After graduating from school, she went to work as a clerk. She became a political activist and eventually a Communist Party member. Ethel also enjoyed singing and was waiting to go onstage to sing at New Year's union benefit when she first met Julius Rosenberg.

They married in the summer of 1939 and had two sons, Michael and Robert. Ethel stayed home with the kids while Julius ran a machine shop with Ethel's brother David Greenglass. Eventually, Greenglass left the failing business.

In 1950, in the midst of the Red Scare, Klaus Fuchs, the head of the physics department of the British nuclear research center at Harwell, was arrested and charged with espionage. Fuchs confessed that he had been passing information to the Soviet Union since working on the Manhattan Project during World War II. The trail of traitors led from Fuchs to communist Elizabeth Bentley to Harry Gold who confessed that he had acted as Fuch's courier. Gold named David Greenglass as a member of the spy ring. When Greenglass confessed, he implicated his sister Ethel and his brother-in-law Julius Rosenberg.

In the summer of 1950, Ethel and Julius were arrested by the FBI and accused of spying for the Soviet Union. Ethel was arrested as she walked to catch a subway after testifying before a grand jury. She was imprisoned immediately, denied even the opportunity to return home to arrange care for her two sons, who had been spending the afternoon with a neighbor.

Ethel and Julius were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage.

The Rosenbergs were tried under the terms of the Espionage Act of 1917, which had been passed to deal with the American anti-war movement. Greenglass provided the main evidence against them, claiming Rosenberg had given atom bomb secrets to him, which he passed to Gold. The defense attorney, Emmanuel Bloch, argued that Greenglass was lying as revenge on Julius for their failed business venture.

The primary interest of the FBI in Ethel Rosenberg lay in the possibility of threatening her with prosecution as a means of convincing Julius to talk. The case against Ethel was very weak. It rested entirely on the testimony of Greenglass and his wife, who described her as present at the time certain conversations about espionage took place and identified her as typing notes on classified information. J. Edgar Hoover urged his Bureau employees to aggressively attempt to build a case against Ethel: "There is no question, but that if Julius Rosenberg would furnish details of his extensive espionage activities, it would be possible to proceed against other individuals. Proceeding against his wife might serve as a lever in this matter."

The only witnesses called by the defense were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Both Rosenbergs pleaded the Fifth Amendment in response to all questions concerning their membership in the Communist Party, most likely to head off potential questions about other acquaintances who might be members of their spy network.

The jury's sympathies might easily have extended toEthel Rosenberg had the defense strategy allowed her to talk openly and emotionally. The stereotype of women that existed in the 1950's would have worked in Ethel's favor if she could have been presented as a dutiful wife. The only evidence of her guilt was the Greenglass testimony about her typing notes from Los Alamos, hardly enough to drive an empathetic jury to a verdict of guilty on a capital charge. Instead, Ethel's testimony was mostly a confirmation of Julius's version of events along with a few terse denials concerning her own role in espionage activity. She appeared to display contempt for the whole proceeding.

Summations by both sides brought the month-long trial to its end, and the eleven-man, one woman jury was sent off to deliberate. Most of the several hours of jury deliberation were spent trying to bring around a lone juror worried about the prospect of Ethel's execution and the impact it would have on her family. Eventually, the holdout caved in. On April 5, 1951 the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. Calling their crime "worse than murder" and blaming them for 50,000 American deaths in Korea, Judge Irving Kaufman sentenced both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death in the electric chair.

For the next two years, Ethel Rosenberg lived on death row at Sing Sing prison maintaining her innocence and hoping for leniency. It never came.

Even J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, had warned that history would not be kind to a government responsible for orphaning the couple's two young sons on such poor evidence.

The two-year long battle to save the Rosenbergs' lives followed. Emanuel Bloch fought heroically on behalf of his clients, taking care of their children, drafting their appeals, pleading at the White House gates in the final hours for a hearing with President Eisenhower. Meanwhile, Julius and Ethel rode an emotional roller coaster of hope and despair as each new appeal was made and rejected. In the end, four justices of the Supreme Court were willing to stay their executions, but it takes five.

If the rumors are true, Ethel and Julius were offered leniency in exchange for naming names. The Rosenbergs remained on death row for twenty-six months. They both refused to confess and provide evidence against others.

The Rosenbergs' two sons, Robert and Michael, marched carrying signs reading "Don't Kill My Mommy and Daddy," thousands of Rosenberg supporters paraded on two continents, radio broadcasts were sponsored on their behalf, letters asking for clemency poured into the White House, and the Pope asked for mercy. None of it mattered.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the electric chair on June 19, 1953 - shortly after 8 p.m. in Sing-Sing Prison.

The first fifty-seven second jolt of electricity failed to kill Ethel. She was given two more jolts before being pronounced dead. Ethel was the first woman executed by the United States Government since Mary Surratt was hanged for her role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

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