Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are sentenced to death for conspiring to commit espionage
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were the first American civilians to be executed for espionage. They were charged with transmitting secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, and convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war.
On April 5, 1951, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. The couple was executed by electric chair just before sunset on June 19, 1953.
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#1 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 5 Apr 2013 at 09:28 AM
Yes, but it's not that simple. While most sources agree that Julius was indeed a spy, there's evidence today that Ethel was possibly innocent, railroaded by her own brother. And it is also worth noting that spies who did far worse things were not given the death penalty. I hate to play the "anti-Semitism" card, but negative stereotypes about Jews were still very much a part of the popular culture, and I do believe that was a factor in the sentence the Rosenbergs received. Feel free to disagree with me.
#2 Posted by Donna L. Halper, CJR on Fri 5 Apr 2013 at 05:35 PM
To Donna, thanks for the thoughtful post. It is, however, depressingly true that the apparatus of which the Rosenbergs were a part was heavily Jewish in its demographic make-up, and fed the stereotypes that you understandably deplore. Even McCarthy was alive to charges of anti-semitism against his Red-bashing, and made sure he had Roy Cohn as a chief aide for protective cover. Judge Kaufman was also Jewish.
The militant anti-communists loathed a WASP patrician like Alger Hiss as much as they detested the Rosenbergs. The Rosenbergs were convicted of passing lethal information to a genuinely evil institution, Stalin's USSR, while American boys were dying in Korea. Ethel almost certainly abetted Julius' activities. People of good will can question the death penalty, but Jonathan Pollard has been imprisoned for life for the much-less offensive action of passing secret information to an ally. I think he - and the Rosenbargs - would have received the same punishment no matter what their ethnicity. Especially since, in the Rodenberg case, the government was using the threat of the death penalty as leverage to get Julius to talk. He called their bluff.
#3 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Sat 6 Apr 2013 at 01:13 PM