In 1953, Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiring to pass
U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, were executed at Sing
Sing Prison, New York. Both proclaimed their innocence right up to the
time of their deaths, by the electric chair. The Rosenbergs
were the first U.S. citizens to be executed for
espionage during peacetime
Julius Rosenberg an engineer for the U.S. Army Signal
Corps born New York, 1918. His wife, Ethel Greenglass,
born 1915, worked as a secretary. The couple met at the Young
Communist League, married in 1939 and had two sons.
Julius
Rosenberg was arrested on suspicion of espionage June
17, 1950 and accused of passing
top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the
Soviet Union. Ethel was arrested two months later.
The Rosenbergs were implicated by David Greenglass, Ethel's
younger brother and a former army sergeant at Los
Alamos, the secret atomic bomb lab in New Mexico.
Greenglass, who himself had confessed to providing nuclear
secrets to the Soviets testified
against his sister and brother-in-law in court. He
served 10 years in prison.
The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence. After a brief trial
in March, 1951 that
attracted much media attention, the couple was convicted.
April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death
Over the next two years, the couple became the subject
of national & international debate. People
believed the Rosenbergs were the victims of hysterical anti-communist feeling in the US
and protested the death sentence. After declining to invoke
executive clemency President Dwight D. Eisenhower stated, "I can only say that, by immeasurably
increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may
have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent
people all over the world.
The execution of two human
beings is a grave matter. But even graver is the thought
of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly
attributable to what these spies have done."
