Rosenberg, Ethel (1915–1953)

American activist sentenced to death for espionage who went to the electric chair resolutely proclaiming her innocence. Born Esther Ethel Greenglass on September 28, 1915, in the Lower East Side of New York City; died in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison, New York, after five jolts of electricity on June 19, 1953; burial site unknown; daughter of Barnet Greenglass (a sewing machine repairer) and Tessie (Fiet) Greenglass; sister of Bernard and David Greenglass; half-sister of Samuel Greenglass; attended local grammar schools, Seward Park High School, 1926–31; attended acting class at Clark House, 1931–33; granted secretarial certificate, Public School 4, 1932; studied modern dance, Henry Street Settlement House, and child development, New School for Social Research, 1944; married Julius Rosenberg, on June 18, 1939; children: two sons, Michael Allen Rosenberg Meeropol (b. March 10, 1943) and Robert Harry Rosenberg Meeropol (b. May 14, 1947).

Employed as shipping clerk, National New York Packing and Shipping Company (1932–35); took voice classes, Schola Cantorum (1935) and Carnegie Hall Studios (1936); attended acting class, Lavanburg Drama Group (1937); hired as stenographer, Bell Textile Company (1936–1940); was a union activist with Ladies Apparel Shipping Clerks Union (1935–38), Workers Alliance of America (1935–38), and Ladies Auxiliary, Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians (1936–40); hired as clerk, Census Bureau (1940); served on East Side Defense Council to Defend America and Crush Hitler (1941–43); indicted and imprisoned, after bail was denied, for conspiracy to commit espionage (August 11, 1950); convicted (March 29, 1951); sentenced to death by Judge Irving Kaufman (April 5, 1951); transferred to Sing Sing Prison where she was the only woman in the Condemned Cells; National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case formed (November 1951); appeal denied by U.S. Court of Appeals (February 25, 1952); Supreme Court refused a certiorari (October 13, 1952); Judge Kaufman refused to reduce sentence (January 2, 1953); Eisenhower refused clemency (February 11, 1953); Supreme Court again refused certiorari (May 25, 1953); Judge Kaufman denied motion to hear new evidence (June 8, 1953); Supreme Court refused to grant new trial (July 19, 1953); executed after Eisenhower again refused clemency (June 19, 1953).

At noon on Thursday, April 5, 1951, Ethel Rosenberg stood with her husband Julius Rosenberg in a New York City courtroom, as Judge Irving Kaufman prepared to announce her sentence for conspiracy to commit espionage. Incarcerated since her indictment the previous August, Rosenberg steadfastly denied that she and her husband passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. The state had not presented an air-tight case against her and few expected that she would receive the same sentence as her co-defendants. Only two other women had ever been convicted of treason against the United States: Iva Toguri ("Tokyo Rose") in 1949, and Mary E. Surratt , whose trial occurred in the wake of Lincoln's assassination in the final days of the Civil War. While the climate of the 1950s was militaristic, it was one of a cold hostility rather than of armed conflict.

Fully aware of the intense public interest in this case, Judge Kaufman took the time to explain his reasoning before he announced his decision. Staring down from the bench, he told Rosenberg that her crime was "worse than murder." Kaufman then proceeded to lay the groundwork for her sentence:

The evidence indicated quite clearly that Julius Rosenberg was the prime mover in this conspiracy. However, let no mistake be made about the role which his wife, Ethel Rosenberg, played in this conspiracy. Instead of deterring him from pursuing his ignoble cause, she encouraged and assisted the cause. She was a mature woman…. She was a full-fledged partner in this crime … [guided by a] love for [the] cause … [that] was even greater than [her] love for [her] children.

Kaufman then sentenced her to death by electrocution.

The jury found Rosenberg guilty because her younger brother David Greenglass, who had given her name to the FBI, testified against her in exchange for a lighter sentence. In widely publicized and unsubstantiated testimony which riveted the nation, Greenglass told the FBI that his sister was a Communist, that she avidly encouraged him to help Julius Rosenberg obtain the confidential information he sought, and that she typed the messages her husband supplied to the Soviets. After charges against David were dismissed, the Greenglass family closed ranks, sided with David, turned their backs on Ethel, and abandoned the two Rosenberg sons, Michael and Robert, to a series of foster homes until they were adopted by Rosenberg's old roommates, Abel and Anne Meeropol , in 1957.

Dissension was not new to the Greenglass household. Indeed, even though she was the first of three children, Ethel Rosenberg always felt like an outsider and went to her grave believing that her mother never cared for her. Born in 1915 into an immigrant household constantly striving to keep above the poverty line, Rosenberg lived with her family in a coldwater, windowless, three-room tenement in the Jewish Lower East Side of New York City—a life that Rosenberg often labeled penurious. Her mother Tessie Greenglass , embittered by her husband Bernard's inability to meet her economic expectations and housebound after having three children in six years, increasingly made Ethel the target of her discontent.

The case is not too strong against Mrs. Rosenberg. But for the purpose of acting as a deterrent, I think it is very important that she is convicted, too, and given a stiff sentence.

—Myles Lane, U.S. Attorney

Determined to leave this household as soon as possible, young Ethel threw herself into her school work, finishing grammar school with honors, skipping a year in high school, and, against her mother's vehement protests, acting and singing in school productions. She dreamed of a college education and a career in the theater. Yet the Great Depression forced her to put aside these aspirations and in 1932 she enrolled in a six-month secretarial course offered by Public School 4. That summer, she found work as a shipping clerk with the National New York Shipping and Packing Company.

Throughout the Depression, Rosenberg strove to balance her need for work with her love for the stage. Since she continued to live at home and her father's income continued to drop, her wages went to her mother. The tension between mother and daughter increased as Ethel tried to keep enough of her earnings to pay for voice lessons at Carnegie Hall. Undeterred when Tessie ultimately demanded that all her wages be turned over to the family, Ethel worked the New York City-New Jersey amateur-night circuit to earn the money she needed to continue the lessons.

As working conditions worsened in the National plant, Rosenberg's desire for a career in music became even more fervent. She auditioned for the Schola Cantorum, a professional chorus that performed at Carnegie Hall, and much to her delight became its youngest member. She eagerly accepted the invitation of National coworkers who were loosely affiliated with the Young Communist League's Group Theater to participate in the sing-alongs they often held in supporters' apartments. As word of her talent spread throughout the plant, she began to make new friends and to achieve the recognition her family denied her.

Gradually, she grew confident in her ability to speak for herself off stage. Angry that men made more than she did for the same work, Rosenberg protested, only to have her wages cut for alleged mistakes. Thus, when the Ladies Apparel Shipping Clerks Union began to recruit National workers, Rosenberg not only responded quickly but became one of the union's most stalwart organizers. When the union called a citywide strike on August 19, demanding better wages and collective bargaining, she not only supported the strike but threw herself into boosting the morale of her fellow strikers. She traveled the city urging workers to support the union jobs, recruited members to walk various picket lines, and served food at the strike soup kitchens.

On Friday, August 30, she joined a contingent of women who successfully prevented National trucks from leaving their warehouses by lying down in the street. As she and her coworkers celebrated their success, they were attacked by a small group of nonunion men swinging lead pipes. Although she escaped unharmed, the attack horrified her, and later she would often tell friends that this attack "started her speaking up against injustice."

Rosenberg returned to National after the strike failed and continued to meet with management to speak out in favor of the union. The first few weeks were tense, but she was confident her job was secure. However, when National executives fired Paul Goldblatt, a leader of the strike whom she admired greatly, Rosenberg protested his dismissal only to find herself dismissed for not having the company's best interests at heart. She appealed to the National Labor Relations Board which, after a five-month delay, found "that Ethel Greenglass was discharged because of her union membership and activities," and ruled that she should be reinstated. By that time, however, she had found a better-paying job as a part-time stenographer with Bell Textile Company. Suddenly, not only did she have more money but she also had more time to pursue her artistic training.

By 1936, work, politics and art were integral parts of Rosenberg's life. She joined Local 65 of the United Wholesale and Retail Union, auditioned for the avant-garde Clark Players, expanded her Carnegie Hall Studio lessons to include voice and piano, and joined the Workers' Alliance, a socialist assembly that would soon join with the Communist-affiliated Unemployed Councils and become known as the Popular Front. While she would never be as involved with the Workers' Alliance as she had been with the leadership of the Shipping Clerks Union, she continued to support strikers by entertaining picketers, union members and Popular Front supporters with romantic songs supporting the Spanish Civil War. Thus, when the International Seaman's Union decided to hold a benefit that December, they immediately asked Rosenberg to perform. She accepted and went to the December gathering alone. She left, however, in the company of an 18-year-old engineering student from City College, Julius Rosenberg.

Quickly, the two young people discovered how much they had in common. A love of the arts, a commitment to Communist politics, and a shared ethnic heritage led to a fiercely passionate courtship. Soon they became inseparable. As her friend from the Clark Players recalled to Rosenberg biographer Ilene Philipson , "Every time I went over to Ethel's he was there studying and she was typing his homework." Another remembered that she "was very much involved with Julius to the exclusion of others." When they did get together with friends on weekend nights, politics dominated the discussion.

Engineering never fascinated Julius. Indeed, after the California labor leader Tom Mooney was unjustly convicted, politics occupied all his intellectual zeal. Arguing that everyone knew that City College engineering students were labeled leftists and therefore had a difficult time finding work, Julius wanted to drop out of school and find a less taxing job that would allow him not only to help support his parents but also to devote his life to what he really cared about. Ethel disagreed and convinced him to balance his commitment to politics and school the way she tried to balance her commitment to art and work. Julius acquiesced, but quickly began to spend more time organizing his fellow students than he did studying engineering.

On June 18, 1939, Ethel Greenglass married Julius Rosenberg in a small civil ceremony. Unable to afford their own apartment because Julius was still in college, the Rosenbergs moved in with Marcus and Stella Pogarsky , friends

from the Young Communist League. Julius began attending campus meetings of the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians (FACET), a Communist union of white-collar workers, and Ethel quickly joined its Ladies Auxiliary. While Julius spent Friday nights at FACET meetings, Ethel attended lectures on politics and art sponsored by the Group Theater and the Lavanburg Dramatic Group. Julius made his commitment to Communism official by joining the party on December 12, 1939. There is no record of Ethel's membership. However, the FBI began a file on her in 1940 after one of her fellow tenants told the bureau that Ethel Rosenberg had signed nominating petitions for Communist candidates.

The Rosenbergs' economic fortunes began to change in 1940. She joined the U.S. Census Bureau as a part-time clerk typist, and in the fall of 1941 the U.S. Signal Corps employed Julius as a junior engineer. After a brief scare, when Julius survived a loyalty hearing after the FBI released its information on Ethel and their friends to the Signal Corps, the Rosenbergs relaxed. The couple now had money to move into their own apartment in a new housing project, Knickerbocker Village, and to let Ethel devote her time to volunteer for political activity. Supporting the United States' entry into World War II, she gave all her time to the East Side Conference to Defend America and Crush Hitler (later renamed the East Side Defense Council) and became personal secretary to its head, Carl Marzani.

Soon Rosenberg's priorities changed. She gave birth to her first son Michael in March 1943. Moreover, since the Signal Corps had stationed Julius on temporary assignment in Camden, New Jersey, she had to deal with her newborn son by herself. Her political work subsided, due to a mixture of parenting responsibilities and pressure from her political colleagues to stay home and tend house. Her health deteriorated in 1944 and 1945 when illnesses associated with her childhood bouts with curvature of the spine resurfaced. Furthermore, Michael was a precocious child who constantly demanded all of his mother's attention. Convinced that children should be encouraged rather than disciplined, Rosenberg allowed Michael's tantrums to control the household. Afraid she was failing her son, she sought guidance from a social worker at the Jewish Board of Guardians and enrolled in a child psychology class at the New School of Social Research. The birth of her second son Robert in May 1947 exacerbated these tensions.

Politics took a backseat to childrearing. Her progressive approach to parenting only accentuated the political conflicts she had with her family. In March 1949, her father, the only real ally she had in the Greenglass family, died. With Julius working 14-hour days trying to manage a small machine business, she felt increasingly isolated and began to question her capabilities. Resolute in her politics, she nevertheless remained full of doubt about herself as a mother and a daughter. After months of internal debate, she finally broke with the Communist position on psychiatry and entered psychoanalysis with Dr. Saul Miller.

Relations between the Rosenbergs and the Greenglass family became even more tense after David Greenglass joined in Julius' unsuccessful business ventures. Tessie Greenglass, David's wife Ruth Greenglass , and his older half-brother Sam Greenglass all agreed that Julius was a bad financial and political influence on David. Sam continued to offer to pay Julius' way to Russia if he would just leave David alone, and Tessie declared that nothing the Rosenbergs did would ever be rewarding. Ruth believed that her husband David was underpaid and overworked. But David continued to support the Rosenbergs until Julius objected to his leaving the shop early three afternoons a week to attend night classes. In May 1950, Greenglass offered to sell his share of the business to the Rosenbergs, but money was scarce and he received only a promissory note for half of his initial investment.

Earlier that year, Klaus Fuchs, a Germanborn scientist, had confessed to British intelligence that he passed atomic information to the Soviets. In May, while the Rosenbergs were completing financial negotiations with David Greenglass, Harry Gold, a Philadelphia chemist, admitted to the FBI that he had been Fuchs' courier and named David Greenglass, who had been assigned to the Los Alamos Atomic Project as a machinist, as his contact. On June 15, Greenglass signed a confession saying that he had passed a "sketch of a high-explosive lens mold" to Gold after Julius Rosenberg had requested that Greenglass give him information Gold could pass on to the Soviets. Ethel Rosenberg was never mentioned. The following day, the FBI questioned Julius Rosenberg and the Rosenbergs retained an attorney. A month later, on the evening of July 17, the FBI searched the Rosenberg apartment and arrested Julius. The next day, Ethel invited the press into her shabby apartment in an attempt to prove to them how absurd she thought the charges against her husband were.

Ethel Rosenberg then took control of Julius' business transactions, strove to calm her highstrung children's anxieties, and worked with her husband's attorney. She became even more isolated. The Greenglass family severed all ties with her. Neighbors shunned her. Her only support came from Julius' parents.

FBI records show that the government had planned from the moment of Julius' arrest to use "any additional information concerning Ethel Rosenberg … as a lever against her husband." J. Edgar Hoover agreed, responding to this request enthusiastically. Consequently, Rosenberg was summoned before the grand jury on August 2, 1950. Outwardly composed to the point of stoicism and completely unaware of the charges leveled against her, she followed her attorney's advice and answered most questions asked her by invoking the Fifth Amendment. The jury released her.

The experience scared her. She worried that her children might be left alone and tried to make contingency plans for their welfare. She made an appointment with the Jewish Community Homemakers Service to find a home for her sons should anything happen. The Service was busy and could only meet with her on the afternoon of August 11, the morning of which she was scheduled to reappear before the grand jury.

This time the jury indicted her on broad conspiracy charges, alleging that she had "had a discussion with Julius Rosenberg and others" on November 1, 1944, and "with Julius Rosenberg, David Greenglass, and others" on January 10, 1945. Unable to meet a $100,000 bail, she was detained in the Women's House of Detention in New York for eight months on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. She sent her children to live with Tessie Greenglass, only to find that her mother relinquished them to the Hebrew Children's Home in November, where they lived before going to a series of foster homes in 1952.

The chief evidence against her was supplied by her sister-in-law, Ruth Greenglass. The day Julius was arrested, Ruth was interviewed by the FBI. She told the agents that while visiting the Rosenbergs' apartment in November 1944, Julius had asked her to get information from Dave, who was then stationed at Los Alamos, in order to help Soviet-American relations "as far as this atomic information was concerned." Ruth claimed that when she appeared hesitant, Ethel interjected that "she should at least ask her husband … if he would furnish this type of information." Although David had not mentioned this in his confession, when confronted with his wife's statement he changed his testimony to match hers.

James McInerney, director of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Justice Department, told the FBI that although Rosenberg was still of great value as a "lever" to use against her husband, there was not enough evidence to convict her. Prosecuting attorney Myles Lane agreed and on February 8 told the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy that "the case is not too strong against Mrs. Rosenberg. But for the purpose of acting as a deterrent, I think it is very important that she is convicted, too, and given a stiff sentence."

Indeed, no specific charges were made against her until three weeks before her trial and again they came from Ruth Greenglass. Ruth now claimed that Ethel had typed the information that Julius had allegedly passed to the Soviets. Even though there had been no mention of this in David Greenglass' testimony and the FBI had recovered no typed information, the government used this deposition as the linchpin of its case against Ethel Rosenberg. When confronted by the FBI, David Greenglass again supported his wife's recollections.

Ethel Rosenberg's trial began on March 6, 1951, and lasted 23 days. Most expected conviction, but few anticipated a death sentence. J. Edgar Hoover recommended that she be sentenced to 30 years in prison. The Kaufman Papers show that even Roy Cohn, who would later join Senator Joseph McCarthy's staff and who supported the death penalty, conceded that "if Mrs. Rosenberg were sentenced to a prison term there was a possibility she would talk." Yet Judge Kaufman had never entertained any sentence other than execution.

Following her sentencing, Rosenberg spent two years in solitary confinement as the only incarcerated woman in Sing Sing prison. She could meet Julius once a week, but a wire-mesh screen separated them. At first, she refused to see her children because she was afraid of the impact visiting their mother in prison might have on them, but after a year, she relented and allowed them to come see her. Even then, however, the visits were infrequent.

The Rosenbergs relied on letters to stay in touch. These documents, which were published as Death House Letters in a desperate attempt to raise money to support the Rosenberg sons, reveal a much more passionate Ethel than the public saw during her trial. Here, Rosenberg the wife and mother dominates Rosenberg the activist. Although they show a woman angry that the government subjected Julius and her to prison for actions she vehemently denied doing, the letters also clearly reveal a woman extremely tormented by the separation from her husband and children and who is desperately searching for a home for her sons.

Although their conviction had inspired two years of legal challenges and international protests, the appellate courts refused to hear new evidence and rejected petitions of clemency. President Dwight Eisenhower also denied her petition for clemency. Judge Kaufman set June 15 as the date of execution.

Attorneys for the Rosenbergs appeared before Kaufman on June 8 to argue that newly discovered evidence of Ruth Greenglass' role in the FBI investigation proved perjury and subornation of perjury. Kaufman recessed for 15 minutes only to return to the court, deny their appeal, and read a 30-minute statement he had prepared in advance.

The Court of Appeals affirmed Kaufman's ruling on June 10. On Friday, June 12, Rosenberg attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court to issue a stay of execution so that the defense might file a motion for a new trial, which would include the recently uncovered evidence. The Supreme Court rejected the motion by a 5–4 vote. The following day, while Rosenberg was saying goodbye to her sons, Justice William O. Douglas granted a stay until the court could rule on whether or nor the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 was applicable to the case. Attorney General Herbert Brownell asked the court to stay in session to rule on the question that Douglas had cited in his announcement. On Wednesday, June 19, the court vacated Douglas' stay by a 5–3 vote. Eisenhower again refused clemency, later writing his son John that "in this instance it is the woman who is the strong and recalcitrant character, the man who is the weak one. She has obviously been the leader in everything they did in the spy ring." The Rosenbergs were executed that evening, still proclaiming their innocence.

In 1995, 42 years later, U.S. intelligence agencies declassified a series of telegrams between Moscow and KGB operatives in America during the 1940s that had been intercepted by the forerunner of the National Security Agency. Julius Rosenberg was mentioned by code names a number of times in these documents, primarily as a recruiter of other spies and receiver of classified information. One telegram from 1944 states that "Ethel," the wife of the code-named spy identified by the U.S. as being Julius Rosenberg, "knows about her husband's work." In 1997, a retired KGB officer, Alexander Feklisov, confirmed that he had been the spy handler for Julius Rosenberg, whom he claimed passed him not only information about the lens mold but also an actual radar-controlled proximity fuse, called one of the first "smart" weapons, which Soviet scientists were able to copy through reverse engineering, produce, and use. Feklisov stated that Ethel Rosenberg had been aware of her husband's spying, but had not been a spy herself, had played no part in his network, and "wasn't doing anything for" the Soviets.

sources:

Meeropol, Michael. The Rosenberg Letters: The Complete Edition of the Prison Correspondence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. NY: Garland, 1994.

——and Robert. We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1975.

National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case. The Kaufman Papers in Hearings before the Sub-Committee on Criminal Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives 97th Congress, First and Second Sessions on Federal Criminal Law Revision, Serial No. 132, Congressional Record. December 122, 1982, 2237–2403.

Nizer, Louis. The Implosion Conspiracy. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973.

Philipson, Ilene. Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths. NY: Franklin Watts, 1988.

Schneir, Walter, and Miriam Schneir. Invitation to an Inquest. NY: Pantheon, 1983.

suggested reading:

Carmichael, Virginia. Framing History: The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Meyerowitz, Joanne. "Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946–1958," in Journal of American History. Vol. 79, no. 4. March 1993, pp. 1455–1483.

Stern, Sol, and Ronald Radosh. "The Hidden Rosenberg Case," in New Republic. June 23, 1979.

related media:

"The Unquiet Death of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg," a television documentary.

Allida Black , Visiting Assistant Professor of History and American Studies, Penn State University, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania