The Rosenberg Case and the Jewish Issue

INTRODUCTION

In 1950 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were arrested in the United States and charged with spying for the Soviet Union. They were tried and sentenced to die in the electric chair. This trial was an important milestone in the history of the Cold War and aroused much public interest and academic research that have continued to this day.

Julius Rosenberg was born on 12 May 1918, the son of a Jewish immigrant from Poland, a laborer in the garment industry of the East Side of New York. Julius excelled in the study of Hebrew and his father wished him to pursue rabbinical studies, but he preferred the Communist Party, joining its ranks at the age of sixteen.

Ethel Greenglass was born 28 September 1915, in New York. She had three brothers. Her father made his living by fixing sewing machines in his workshop. Ethel was sent to study in a Talmud Torah, and later attended a public school until she was fifteen years old. She worked as a clerk in a shipping company for four years, until she was dismissed because she organized a strike of 150 workers. Her political awareness motivated her to join the Communist Party. Julius and Ethel met while participating in Communist Party activities and were married in 1939, after Julius completed a degree in electrical engineering at the College of the City of New York (CCNY). In the fall of 1940 he was hired as a civilian employee by the US Army Signal Corps. Ethel, who had health problems, became a housewife. In 1943, they both left the ranks of the Communist Party. In early 1945 Julius was fired from his job after his communist past became known. He opened a business with his brother-in-law David Greenglass and other partners, but the business failed. On 17 July 1950, Julius was arrested on the charge of espionage, and his wife was arrested on 11 August on the same charge. His brother-in-law David Greenglass had named Julius as the person who had recruited him to spy for the Soviet Union. The couple was executed on 19 June 1953.

The Rosenberg espionage affair was closely related to Jewish issues and interests in the United States, especially since many key secondary figures in the story were Jewish: the defendants Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell; prosecution witnesses Harry Gold and David and Ruth Greenglass; defense attorney father and son Alexander and Emanuel Bloch; prosecutor Irving Saypol; his assistant Roy M. Cohn; and Judge Irving Kaufman who sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair.

This was true for later stages of the Rosenberg story as well: Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, a Jew, presided in their appeal, and was the only one who persisted in his support of granting it. Other secondary figures in the Rosenberg saga, especially among the witnesses for both the defense and the prosecution, were also Jewish: Joel Barr, Morton Sobell, Alfred Sarant, William Perl, Max Elitcher, and the photographer Ben Schneider. On the other hand, there were no Jews on the jury. Neither the defense nor the prosecution wanted Jews on it for obvious, opposing reasons. The prosecution thought that Jews would lean toward the defendants and the defense feared that Jewish jurors would automatically be hostile toward Jews who had strayed, endangering America’s entire Jewish population and highlighting the question of their loyalty. Hence the attorneys from both sides disqualified all Jewish jurors, which avoided a possible accusation by antisemites of Jewish jurors showing favoritism toward the defendants. Vincent Lebonitte, the foreman of the jury issued the following problematic statement, “I felt good that this was strictly a Jewish show. It was Jew against Jew. It wasn’t the Christians hanging the Jews.”¹

Not all Americans viewed communism with fear and suspicion. In fact, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, two decades before the Rosenberg trial, communism had a following of thousands, including numerous Jewish immigrants and their descendants. Many of them joined the American Communist Party, founded in 1919,² or supported communist ideology. They were captivated by the ‘revolution’ that supposedly would eventually solve the world’s social and economic problems and guarantee equality and economic well-being. This contrasted with the failure and despair associated with capitalism after the Great Crash of 1929 and its aftermath, the Great Depression.³

The fact that the Soviet Union and the United States joined forces in 1941 as part of the allied coalition fighting Nazi Germany enhanced the USSR’s positive image among Americans previously inclined toward socialism. Moreover, like many Jews worldwide, some American Jews may have been influenced by the image of the heroic stand of the Russians against the Nazis, the partisans' struggle against the Germans, and the claim that communist partisans were the only ones to help Jews. Soviet intelligence services took advantage of this sympathy in order to recruit agents, with the American Communist Party being an ideal milieu for their activities. Furthermore, the Communist Party succeeded in capturing control of many workers unions.⁴

It was not surprising that most of the witnesses in the Rosenberg trial were Jews sympathetic to the communist cause. Jewish intellectuals, many of them recent immigrants to the United States, were among the leaders of American communism. Harry Gold, for example, testified that the antisemitism he had suffered at school and at his work place had prompted him to support communism. He saw in ‘scientific socialism’ the only effective tool against antisemitism. “To me, Nazism and fascism and antisemitism were identical… Anything that was against antisemitism I was for, and so the chance to help strengthen the Soviet Union appeared as such a wonderful opportunity.”⁵

When World War II ended, the attitude of the United States toward the USSR in particular and toward communism in general changed drastically. The conflict between the two superpowers over the Soviet siege of Berlin in 1948 was one of the key features of the new emerging reality of the Cold War in the post-World War II era. The Great Powers drifted into a zero sum foreign and defense policy whereby every western gain was perceived as a communist loss and vice versa, and policy was aimed at containing the adversary and preventing, by force if necessary, any attempt by either side to expand its sphere of influence. On 28 August 1949 the Cold War abruptly changed from a conventional and ideological conflict into a nuclear balance of fear, when the USSR successfully tested its first nuclear device. In October of that year Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Communist Party completed the takeover of mainland China, establishing the People’s Republic of China. In the space of less than a year, as of June 1950, the United States was involved in a bloody conflict in Korea aimed at containing communism from expanding southward by force.

The sense of world instability created fear in the United States as the country lost its monopoly in nuclear weapons. In 1938 the US Congress had established the House Un-American Activities Committee to investigate the threat of subversion by groups in the country. This committee moved onto center stage and became extremely active in the early 1950s.⁶

 

The ‘Red Scare’: Arrests and Trial

In February 1950, an unknown senator by the name of Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin delivered a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, claming that no fewer than 250 communist agents held key positions in the government. This speech ushered in the dark era of McCarthyism. The Red Scare, ‘blacklisting’, and persecution of those suspected of being Communists, coupled with mass hysteria that communism was taking over America, became the order of the day. It was no wonder, therefore, that the average American appeared to encounter communist conspiracies, threats or plots wherever he turned. Americans felt threatened by Soviet mass destruction capabilities. Communism was taking over vast areas of Europe and the Far East. In addition, the press was telling the average American that Soviet secret agents were active in Washington, DC, itself. The public demanded the arrest of communist ‘traitors’. It appears that the Rosenberg case satisfied part of the public clamor for capturing and punishing the disloyal.

During World War II a group of scientists was assembled at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to work on the development of the atomic bomb, in what became known as the Manhattan Project. Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British physicist was employed on the project and spied for the Soviet Union.⁷ In 1945 Fuchs met a Soviet agent code-named Raymond and supplied him with information regarding the development of the bomb. In February 1950 Fuchs was arrested in Britain and admitted that he had passed information to the Soviets regarding the Manhattan Project.⁸ A week later Senator McCarthy made the speech mentioned above, reviving the Red Scare. The arrest of Fuchs was facilitated by the fact that the FBI had cracked the code used in the messages from the New York Soviet consulate to KGB headquarters. These communiqués became known as ‘The Venona Cables’. When Fuchs was confronted with one of these messages, a report from him regarding progress of the Manhattan Project, he admitted to his meeting with ‘Raymond’. Within three months the FBI had deduced that ‘Raymond’ was, in fact, the chemist Harry Gold, who was subsequently arrested and charged with espionage.⁹ On 1 June Gold told investigators that in September 1945 he had paid a soldier $500 for information regarding the lens designed to ignite the nuclear bomb. All he claimed that he could remember about that soldier was that he lived in New York and that the name of his wife was probably Ruth. It took Gold two more days to identify the soldier as David Greenglass. On 15 June Greenglass was interrogated and he confessed that he had traveled to Albuquerque in order to transfer the information to Gold. He also implicated his wife Ruth and his brother-in-law Julius Rosenberg as his associates in the Soviet spy ring.

According to Greenglass, as early as late 1943 Julius Rosenberg had inquired as to whether he, Greenglass, would be willing to spy for the Soviet Union. Greenglass claimed that the Rosenbergs had left the Communist Party as a result of their decision to work for the Soviet Union, whereas they maintained in their interrogation that they a wished to spend more time with their son, born that year. Julius Rosenberg, said Greenglass, was excited to hear that he, Greenglass, was to serve as a mechanic in Los Alamos and asked Ethel to speak with her brother about gathering information on the Manhattan Project. David Greenglass was happy to assist and for the coming year prepared diagrams and explanations regarding the detonation lens of the nuclear bomb developed in Los Alamos. These were passed directly to Rosenberg in New York, or through Harry Gold, who acted as a courier through New Mexico. Greenglass testified that in 1949 Rosenberg was shaken when he found out through Soviet intelligence that the FBI was about to expose Fuchs and the others involved in the espionage ring. He implored Greenglass to prepare passports so that they might flee to Europe, but Greenglass refused because of his wife’s poor health.

On 16 June 1951, shortly after 08:00 am, FBI agents arrived at the Rosenbergs’ residence and took Julius in for an interrogation. Unlike those questioned before him, he did not crack under investigation and demanded a confrontation with his accusers. That night the services of the lawyer Emanuel Bloch, who was well known for representing leftists and ‘Communists’, were retained.¹⁰ One month later, on 17 July, Julius was detained on the charge of espionage. His arrest was based on the testimony of David and Ruth Greenglass. Ethel Rosenberg was arrested on 11 August, although there was barely any evidence against her. Her detention rested solely on David Greenglass’ testimony that Ethel was present during some of the conversations that dealt with espionage. Head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover urged his men to find evidence against Ethel as a way to pressure Julius.¹¹When this tactic failed, the authorities were determined to prosecute Ethel as a full partner in her husband’s espionage activities.

In the meantime the lives of many of their acquaintances from the period they were active in the Communist Party had changed. Joel Barr, a friend of Julius from college, disappeared in Paris the day Greenglass was arrested, leaving most of his personal belongings behind. A few days later, Morton Sobell, another college friend of Julius, fled with his family to Mexico. Alfred Sarant also managed to evade FBI surveillance and reached Mexico. William Perl was a physicist who knew Ethel, Julius Barr and Sobell in college and lived near them when he worked as a lecturer at Colombia University in New York. In the early 1940s he worked for NACA, the forerunner of NASA, where he dealt with many top-secret documents; he refused his fiancée’s pleas to flee to Europe. In the summer of 1950 he was called to testify before a grand jury in regard to the Rosenbergs’ investigation; Perl denied ever having met the Rosenbergs. He was arrested in March 1951 and charged with espionage, but was convicted only of perjury in May 1953. Gold was arrested on 24 May 1950.

Max Elitcher, an acquaintance of the Rosenbergs from college chose to cooperate with the authorities and testified that Julius had tried to recruit him as a spy in 1944. He recounted a night trip in New York he took together with Sobell in 1948, so that Sobell could deposit a 35 mm film with Rosenberg. Based on this testimony, a warrant for Sobell’s arrest in Mexico was issued. After Sobell failed to obtain transit documents to Europe, he was kidnapped by a band of Mexicans in Mexico City, who took him on an 800-mile forced journey to the Texas border, where they handed him over to the FBI.

On 6 March 1951, the trial of Morton Sobell and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, on the charge of espionage, opened in New York. The prosecutor was the district attorney for South New York, Irving H. Saypol, who had gained a reputation in trials against Communists.¹²

In his opening statement to the jury, Saypol said that the defendants had “committed the most serious crime that can be committed against the people of this country.” The defendants, according to Saypol, had “joined with their co-conspirators in a deliberate, carefully planned conspiracy to deliver to the Soviet Union the information and the weapons the Soviet Union could use to destroy us.” The defense attorney Emanuel Bloch asked the jury in his opening statement to give the defendants “a fair shake in the American way,” asking them not to be biased or influenced by prejudice or history.

The first witness for the prosecution was Max Elitcher. His testimony regarding his 1948 trip to the Rosenberg apartment was practically the sole basis for the case against Sobell. The next witness was David Greenglass, who was questioned by Saypol’s assistant Roy M. Cohn.¹³ After Greenglass admitted to passing on the sketches of the detonating lens of the atom bomb, he was temporarily replaced on the stand by an expert witness, Walter Koski, a physicist from the Atomic Energy Commission, who explained the importance of the lens to the development of the atom bomb. Greenglass returned to the stand to relate to the captivated jury the story of the Rosenbergs’ espionage. He told them about burning notes in a pan and splitting Jell-O boxes in two as a means of identification. He added tales about clandestine meetings in dark streets, money that he was offered, and escape routes to reach safety behind the Iron Curtain. As the FBI began to close in on them, Ruth Greenglass testified that her brother-in-law Julius Rosenberg had asked her to find out if her husband would be willing to supply information on progress on the Manhattan Project. She claimed that Julius had coached her on how to meet a courier, Harry Gold, who appeared at their apartment in Albuquerque with a box of Jell-O as the means of identification. The most important part of her testimony concerned Ethel Rosenberg, and was the only ‘incriminating’ evidence against Julius’ wife. She alleged that one night in 1945 she saw Ethel typing from handwritten notes of her brother David Greenglass.¹⁴

Harry Gold claimed during his interrogation before the trial that he had never met the Rosenbergs. He turned out to be a most effective witness for the prosecution. Facing thirty years in jail, he felt that he had nothing to lose, confessed and was snugly ensconced in the so-called singer's heaven in the eleventh floor of the New York City jail known as the tombs. Gold recounted his meeting with Anatoly Yakovlev, a member of the Soviet delegation to the UN, who, in fact, was in charge of KGB activities in the United States. From him he had received a clandestine note with the name Greenglass and an address in Albuquerque, and instructions to proceed to New Mexico, locate the address and say: “I came from Julius.”¹⁵ According to his testimony, Greenglass gave him notes and diagrams in his own handwriting. Yakovlev evaluated these later as excellent and very valuable. Elizabeth Bentley dubbed by the press “the Red Spy Queen,” added further drama to the trial. She was a former Soviet spy and mistress of Yakov Golos, who was in charge of Soviet espionage in the United States till 1943. Bentley repented and confessed to her activities. She claimed that she received a number of phone calls from a man who introduced himself as Julius and asked to speak with Golos. The last witness for the prosecution was a photographer named Ben Schneider;¹⁶ he testified that the Rosenbergs had visited his studio one Saturday in June 1950 and requested three dozen passport photos. He claimed to have remembered the unusual amount of photos and their two mischievous children. He testified that the couple told him that they were going to France where they had inherited some property.

The only defense witnesses were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They employed the Fifth Amendment regarding all questions pertaining to their membership in the Communist Party in order not to incriminate their acquaintances. Julius testified that he lived modestly, a fact that he believed was not in keeping with the life style of an atom spy who would receive vast sums of money. Julius categorically denied having received any information from Greenglass in regard to the atom bomb or gifts from the Russians. He also denied that he had tried to recruit Elitcher for the purpose of spying. He refuted the Jell-O incident, claiming that it was Greenglass who came to him for money, and he denied that he had offered Elitcher money to flee. Ethel basically confirmed her husband’s testimony. She repeatedly denied having taken part in espionage activities.Sobell took the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify.

In his summation before the jury, Irving Saypol portrayed Julius Rosenberg as the key figure in the espionage ring. He asked the jurors to imagine a wheel with Julius Rosenberg in its center sending out octopus-like arms to grasp everybody. The defense tried to undermine Greenglass’ credibility, asking the jury to make their decision without regard to their abhorrence of communism. The jury returned after a few hours after the only juror who had objected to the convictions relented. That juror had been afraid of the effects of executing a mother.

On 29 March 1951, the three defendants were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. On 5 April Justice Irving R. Kaufman read the verdict.¹⁷ Morton Sobell was sentenced to thirty years imprisonment. The Rosenbergs were sent to the electric chair.

Justifying the verdict, the judge characterized Julius and Ethel’s crime as “worse than murder” and as a satanic plot to destroy an entire God-fearing nation.

Moreover, he stated:

… the communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but what that millions more innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal, you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country.¹⁸

Thus, the judge blamed the Rosenbergs for the death of 50,000 American soldiers in Korea and implied that they were directly responsible for the Soviet Union’s acquisition of the atomic bomb.

During the Rosenberg trial, the Communist Party did not support the Rosenbergs and in fact abandoned them. This was despite the fact that they were in clear danger of paying with their lives for their communist beliefs and ideals.¹⁹ They had many other advocates and supporters. A very wide range of people supported the Rosenbergs for numerous and very diverse reasons. Some were convinced that the trial was political – a ‘Cold War’ trial; others felt that it was a sort of modern Dreyfus affair, that the Rosenbergs had been sent to the electric chair because they were Jews and that the entire trial was an anti-Jewish affair; many others used it as an opportunity to lash out at the United States; there were also jurists who felt that the evidence presented at the trial and the conduct of Judge Kaufman were highly questionable and that the Rosenbergs did not have a fair trial. Friends, and especially their lawyer, spent the next two years in a long and courageous effort to overturn the death sentence. Bloch bombarded the courts, including the Supreme Court, with petitions, appeals against the proceedings of the trial as a whole and against the severity of the punishment, and requests for continuances (see below).President Harry S. Truman was inundated with petitions requesting a pardon for the Rosenbergs. Even the Pope entered a plea on their behalf, while the radio and press carried numerous public appeals.²⁰

Demonstrations on behalf of the Rosenbergs were held throughout the United States and beyond by various organizations, including communist fronts, civil libertarians, some Jewish groups and many others. Their children Robert and Michael appeared at rallies with banners that read, “Do not kill our parents.” In the meantime, Julius and Ethel conducted a correspondence in jail that revealed a love story that was to end in tragedy.²¹ All the efforts to save them were in vain.

On the morning of 19 June 1953, shortly after eight o’clock, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in Sing Sing prison. Emanuel Bloch, who gave the eulogy at their funeral, was appointed guardian of their children. After a short stay with their grandparents, Michael and Robert were adopted by the Meeropol family in 1957.²²

 

Reaction of the Jewish Community

The many Jews in the courtroom during the Rosenberg case represented different facets of the Jewish community of America: Communists, liberals, conservatives, intellectuals, professionals, politicians and many more. The trial revived disputes within the community and led to intra-communal clashes.²³

The harsh verdict of Judge Kaufman highlighted the question of ‘reverse objectivity’. Two weeks after the end of the trial the daily Jewish Day published an editorial asking whether Judge Kaufman’s decision was motivated by fear that any other decision would be interpreted as favoritism toward his Jewish brethren. Both Christians and Jews who opposed the verdict voiced the argument of ‘the Jewish complex’. According to them, the correlation Justice Kaufman made between the death of American soldiers in Korea and the Rosenbergs’ crime added fuel to the already existing fire of antisemitic propaganda. When it was discovered that the maiden name of Kaufman’s wife was Rosenberg (bearing no relation to the accused) it was speculated that the judge had deep reservations about the Rosenbergs, supposedly because this raised the question of the Jews’ dual loyalty, the alleged clash between their religious and national allegiances. This, some felt, threatened ‘respectable’ Jews like the judge and his family. Initially, most Jews accepted the verdict and with it the guilt of the Rosenbergs as a sad and disturbing fact. Jewish political organizations and the Jewish establishment neither supported nor opposed the efforts to save the Rosenbergs from the electric chair. Representatives of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) declared that the trial demonstrated the employment of the highest standards of fairness and lawfulness. They based their stance on that of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which refused to support the claim put forth by several Jewish organizations that the proceedings were tainted with antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL) expressed similar views to those of the AJC. Their approach was a reaction to the Communists’ attempt to portray the trial as a case study of American antisemitism and racism. The fear of the Jewish organizations was that if they attempted to assist the Rosenbergs in any manner they would be associated in the public’s mind with support of communism. Thus, they did not back campaigns on behalf of the Rosenbergs. In an article on a related matter published on 22 December 1952, in the New Leader, historian Lucy Davidowicz explained how the Communists had used the Negros’ struggle and now in the Rosenberg case, the Jewish issue, as tools in “their war against America.” Davidowicz accused the Communists of creating a false analogy when they claimed that anti-communism led to antisemitism and fascism.²⁴

This was not the first time the AJC had sided with the administration when issues of dual loyalty were at issue. The same had happened when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was questioning Jews and their civil rights were at risk. The AJC denounced those who resorted to the Fifth Amendment, deeming them unpatriotic, and attempts were made to exclude them from the community. In the Rosenberg case, the AJC feared that the large number of Jews involved would provoke a wave of antisemitism that would link disloyalty to Judaism. The severity and depth of their concern may be demonstrated by the fact that a public affairs contingency plan was prepared in order to rebuff such a connection.²⁵ Simultaneously, the AJC was active in sponsoring opposition to campaigns in support of the Rosenbergs. A member of the AJC, Rabbi S.A. Fineberg kept a close watch on the activities of a small voluntary committee of liberal Jewish intellectuals called the Committee to Secure Justice, and published a monograph at the end of 1953, The Rosenberg Case: Fact and Fiction, expressing full support for the government and the District Attorney’s office, and rejecting each and every argument they attempted to present. Fineberg also attacked those who supported the Rosenbergs as well as those that called for a pardon on humanitarian grounds, branding them Communists or worse. This approach discredited him and his position.²⁶

Most large Jewish organizations at that time were petrified that Jews might be accused of disloyalty or communism. Throughout 1952 Jewish organizations such as the AJC, ADL, Jewish War Veterans of the US Jewish Labor Committee and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations published several declarations denouncing the attempts to link the Rosenberg case with antisemitism, and warning Jews not to take part in the “communist” efforts on behalf of the Rosenbergs. These organizations believed that such activities might create a linkage in the minds of Americans between communism and disloyalty and Judaism and betrayal. Their efforts to prevent the use of community centers for gatherings that supported a pardon for the Rosenbergs were successful.²⁷

The Jewish organizations’ position was strengthened with the Slansky trial in Czechoslovakia at the end of 1952. This was a showcase, antisemitic, kangaroo court staged as part of Stalin’s purges. Fourteen senior Communists were put on trial, eleven of them Jews. The leading defendant, Rudolf Slansky, was accused of treason, espionage and ‘Zionism’. They ‘confessed’ and were executed although they were innocent.²⁸ For Jewish organizations in America this was the ultimate proof that Communists exploited antisemitism in the United States as a smoke screen for deep-seated and rampant antisemitism in the Soviet Union and behind the Iron Curtain as a whole.²⁹

The reaction of the American Jewish establishment and of Jewish individuals was not isolated from their environment. It was a result of the climate and hysteria of the Red Scare that prevailed in the country at that time. Three major factors dictated the response of the Jews to the Rosenberg affair: the fear that the Jews would once again become scapegoats; the fact that many communist leaders in the United States and worldwide were Jews; and their constant wish to belong to and be part of the American establishment.³⁰ Those factors drove the communal Jewish leadership to disengage itself from anything that might even be remotely considered support of treachery and betrayal.

On the other hand, some Jewish public figures and Jewish organizations as well as parts of the Yiddish and English [Jewish] press refused to abandon the Rosenbergs. Most accepted their guilt, but questioned the harsh verdict, raising questions about the fairness and legality of the trial and the verdict. An example of this thinking was a piece written on 12 April 1951 by the editor of the Yiddish paper The Day (Der Tog), who criticized Justice Kaufman’s final statement. The editor asserted that the prosecutor and the judge had not taken into account the possibility that the verdict would taint the entire Jewish community. He therefore accused Kaufman of groveling to the government in order to prove his loyalty.³¹ This statement highlighted the quandary of the American Jewish community and its uncertainty as to its status.

Those who supported the Rosenbergs fought a dedicated battle against the death penalty imposed on them. Some felt that they were innocent and others believed the punishment was excessive. It was a small core group of family members and public figures, mostly Jewish, who led the fight and were known as the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case. Prominent members of this group were the Rosenberg children, Morton Sobell’s wife, the Blochs, the writer and film producer David Alman, the writers Yuri Suhl and Joseph Brainin, the anthropologist Gene Weltfish, Zionist activist Ben Z. Goldberg and Guardian reporter William Reuben. Other prominent figures, both Jews and non-Jews, such as Morse Lovett, Waldo Frank, W.E.B. Dubois, and Louis Harap the editor of the Jewish-Communist newspaper Jewish Life, joined them.³²

 

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TRIAL AND THE ROLE OF ANTISEMITISM

At first the group did not succeed in enlisting much support but this changed in the second half of 1952 when the issue of antisemitism was debated in the public arena, after the Supreme Court had rejected the defense’s request for a new hearing. On 23 October, the communist Daily Worker published a declaration by Ellyn Ross, an activist in the Civil Right Congress, which said, “Every Jew knows in his heart that the Rosenbergs have been convicted because of antisemitism.”³³

Outside of the US the question of antisemitism provoked stronger reactions. In Europe the relatively light punishment that Klaus Fuchs received from the British – fourteen years compared to the execution of two supposedly insignificant cogs in the communist espionage apparatus – led to the conclusion that the Jewish couple were indeed scapegoats. The memory of the Dreyfus affair in France and the more recent atrocities of the Nazis tinged America with antisemitism.³⁴ Those fighting for the Rosenbergs focused on the proprieties of the proceedings, the fact that no Jews were on the jury and the possible influence of fear of antisemitism that might have motivated Judge Kaufman to dispense such a harsh verdict. Furthermore, there was concern that antisemitic elements would use the outcome of the trial as a means to spread their ideology of hatred.³⁵ Once the question of antisemitism was raised it set the stage for a much broader debate.

Crucial questions in the Rosenberg affair related to the veracity of the facts presented in the trial and whether Ethel and Julius Rosenberg indeed spied for the Soviet Union. Those topics evolved into a lively debate as time passed. The Rosenberg children and researchers Walter and Miriam Schneir and John Wexley maintained that the trial was a governmental plot spawned within the ambiance of McCarthyism and intended to frame an innocent Jewish-communist couple especially because they were Jews. Lewis Nizer and Jonathan Root concluded categorically on the other hand, that the Rosenbergs were indeed traitors who deserved their punishment and that there was no governmental plot to convict the Rosenbergs or to fabricate evidence against them. In the middle, yet closer to the latter position, were Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton who reckoned that Julius Rosenberg was guilty of spying but that Ethel Rosenberg should have been acquitted on grounds of reasonable doubt, and that the government used her cruelly and cynically as a pawn against her husband.³⁶

After a review of all the evidence, one could certainly deduce that all those accused were in fact involved with a spy ring that passed atom bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. New facts that came to light after the trial, following enactment of the Freedom of Information Act in 1975 enabling access to previously secret documents of the American intelligence apparatus, served to reinforce this deduction. Especially relevant to the Rosenberg case were the Venona Cables – the Soviet diplomatic messages sent to and from Washington and Moscow between 1940 and 1948. These documents were deciphered by American intelligence and in July 1995 their publication began.³⁷ The conclusions from these documents were unequivocal. Julius Rosenberg, code-named ‘Antenna’ or ‘Liberal’, was part of a spy ring that gathered information on the atom bomb. These cables indicated the depth of his involvement and that of his co-conspirators and fellow accused: Alfred Sarant, Max Elitcher, Joel Barr, David Greenglass, Harry Gold, and William Perl. Ethel Rosenberg was mentioned only as a minor auxiliary to her husband’s activities.³⁸

These cables were not the only concrete evidence at hand which indicated that the Rosenbergs, or at least Julius, spied for the Soviet Union. Alexander Feklisov,³⁹ who was a senior KGB officer at the Soviet consulate in New York from 1940 and 1946,⁴⁰ revealed that among his duties was the recruitment of communist sympathizers for espionage purposes in the United States. According to his testimony, published in the Washington Post in March 1997,⁴¹ Julius Rosenberg was one of those recruits, and they met fifty times between 1943 and 1946 so that Julius might receive guidance in running the spy ring. In regard to Ethel Rosenberg, he stated that she had never met Soviet agents, and even if she was aware of her husband’s activities she took no part in them. Furthermore, he confirmed that Harry Gold was part of the conspiracy. He added that two more spies belonged to the ring.⁴² Further evidence on the Rosenbergs’ activities appeared in the memoirs of former head of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev, published in 1990. He wrote that the Rosenbergs had aided the Soviet Union in the development of the atomic bomb. Radosh and Milton managed to locate Sarant and Barr in the early 1990s, behind the former Iron Curtain. Barr admitted to Radosh his involvement in nuclear spying for the Soviets.⁴³

The death penalty the Rosenbergs received was based on the notion promoted by anti-Communists such as Judge Kaufman and Roy Cohn that the Rosenbergs had disclosed to the Soviets the secret of the atom bomb by transmitting to them a diagram of the detonation lens. It is clear that even if this were true, they were not the only ones spying for the USSR, but were part of a large spy net set up by the KGB to expedite Soviet efforts to obtain their first atom bomb.The myth was based largely on scientific estimates that Soviet nuclear technology was not well developed. When the Soviets tested their first atomic device it was widely believed in the West that the Soviets had overcome their backwardness by stealing atom secrets from them. The Rosenbergs’ punishment was much more severe than that meted to other members of their alleged spy ring. As noted, Klaus Fuchs, who gave the Soviets the most vital information, was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment by a British court; Morton Sobell and Harry Gold were sentenced to fifteen years, and Perl spent only five years in jail.⁴⁴

In a book published in 1973, Louis Nizer concluded that the Rosenbergs had all the protection that a democratic system provided. They had a trial by jury, legal counsel, adequate defense and the right to appeal. The United States allowed them twenty-seven months of appeals. All the appeals and other legal maneuvers were examples of the proper workings of “regulatory and due process.”⁴⁵ But the facts seem to indicate flaws in this process in the Rosenberg trial, which indeed cast doubt on its fairness. There was hardly any evidence presented against Ethel Rosenberg, for instance. She was damned and doomed by the testimony of her brother who claimed to have seen her typing some notes. The prosecution witnesses and evidence were problematic. The three key witnesses collaborated with the FBI, implicating each other in espionage. They were David Greenglass, his wife Ruth, who was not charged due to a plea bargain, and Harry Gold. Another witness, Elizabeth Bentley, testified that she had overheard the name “Julius” in a phone conversation. Other exhibits of the prosecution were dubious as well: a sketch Greenglass had made from memory of the lens; a photo of Harry Gold’s sketch from the hotel in Albuquerque; a facsimile of the Jell-O box cover (the supposed means of identification); the passport photos of the Rosenberg family, allegedly made when they considered fleeing because the FBI was pursuing them – according to the testimony of the photographer Schneider; and the $4000 Greenglass claimed he had received in June 1950 from Rosenberg in order that they might escape abroad. The basis of the prosecution case against the Rosenbergs rested on shaky foundations at best. These were testimonies of people with vested interests in saving their own skins by casting blame on others, while the evidence presented could not be connected directly to the accused and could be explained in other innocent ways.⁴⁶

The defense had serious complaints in regard to the conduct of Judge Kaufman, and especially the antagonism and bias he demonstrated against the defendants. An example was his refusal to permit the defense to cross-examine Ruth Greenglass. The harsh wording of the verdict made clear the judge’s hostility toward the defendants. In retrospect one could see that the problems extended far beyond Kaufman’s bias and political stand. One of the most interesting revelations in Radosh and Milton’s research was their discovery of records that showed that the prosecutor Saypol and Justice Kaufman had consulted with each other immediately prior to the verdict, with Kaufman agreeing to Saypol’s request for severe punishment. Saypol was a frequent visitor to Kaufman’s chambers and acted as a contact between the judge and numerous senior administration officials and politicians, including the head of the FBI.⁴⁷

There was little doubt, too, that Saypol used the media to create a hostile atmosphere toward the defendants. An example was William Perl’s speedy conviction which was accompanied by Saypol’s commentary published in the press claiming that once convicted Perl would become another witness for the prosecution; however, Perl was not called to testify against the Rosenbergs.⁴⁸

Moreover, justice in the Rosenberg trial was not well served as they were tried under a law that did not correspond to the charges in the case and therefore their conviction was a violation of the Constitution. They should have been tried for contravening the Atomic Energy Act of 1946; instead they were prosecuted under the provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917. This legal argument was raised in the appeal before the Supreme Court. One justice, William O. Douglas, accepted this argument but used it to justify the death penalty; the other justices did not accept it on grounds that clearly were not legal ones, but because of their strong anti-communism.⁴⁹ Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution states: “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” The Rosenbergs’ activities took place between 1944 and 1948, during at least part of that time the Soviet Union was an ally and not an enemy of the United States. The Cold War had not yet begun and thus the Soviet Union could not be considered an enemy.⁵⁰

Furthermore, the Rosenbergs were charged with espionage, not treason, but the prosecution called them “traitors” at every juncture in an attempt to aggravate their actions. The Constitution goes on to say (Article III. Section 3.), “No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.” Most of the testimony against the Rosenbergs was based on the testimony of a single witness, David Greenglass, and on that of a witness who cooperated with the government after a plea bargain. Constitutionally this was problematic. In their appeal against the verdict, the Rosenbergs’ attorneys stated that according to the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution (“… nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”), civil courts had no authority to order the death penalty for offenses of espionage.⁵¹

The Rosenbergs’ legal representatives, Emanuel and Alexander Bloch, were, without a doubt, loyal and devoted, but on hindsight the defense suffered from serious shortcomings that were devastating to their fate. No real attempt was made to discredit the testimony of David Greenglass. A more serious mistake related to Harry Gold, the witness who linked Greenglass to the Soviets. He was not cross-examined by the defense, which did not bother to challenge his testimony concerning the Jell-O box top, the contact with Yakovlev and the password “Julius sent me.” Miriam and Walter Schneir pointed out that in later trials Gold’s testimony regarding his contact with the Rosenbergs collapsed in cross-examination. The most problematic issue concerned Gold’s hotel registration card in Albuquerque. There was a discrepancy between the automatic date punched on the card by the machine and the date handwritten by the hotel clerk (3 or 4 June 1945). Radosh and Milton solved this riddle regarding Gold’s testimony over thirty years after the affair. In their research initially published in 1983, they proved that since the difference was due to a malfunction in the machine, contradictions in Gold’s testimony could easily be explained.⁵² In any event, no attempt was made to challenge his testimony and it was accepted at face value.

The jury might have shown leniency toward Ethel had the defense chosen to let her speak freely on the witness stand. A greater effort could have been made to depict Ethel as a devoted mother and wife, in keeping with the traditional norms that prevailed in the United States at the time.⁵³ More importantly, no attempt was made to contradict Ruth Greenglass’ testimony regarding Ethel typing a document for Julius, which was the only evidence against her. After the verdict, the defense attorneys tried every possible legal avenue: retrying the case, appeals, and a stay of execution. Seven times the Supreme Court refused to re-open the Rosenberg case. Most of the justices were motivated by personal considerations such as personal prestige and a conservative point of view. They deliberately ignored breaches of law and ethics that took place during the trial, as well as perjury and dubious and unreliable evidence and, moreover, chose to disregard the unacceptable and unethical relationship between the Judge and the prosecutor. This behavior mirrored the anti-communist atmosphere that existed in America at that time and the patriotic hysteria that prevailed during those tumultuous times. The wording of the ruling in the appeal pointed to the fact that no serious deliberations or debates had taken place among the justices of the Supreme Court. Justice Felix Frankfurter, the only Supreme Court justice who supported the Rosenbergs’ appeal, observed that the minds of the justices had been made up long before they met. He added that most of the debate centered on whether to publish the decision in the afternoon or whether to wait another day and publish it at noon. He emphasized that no substantive discussion of the issues involved had occurred.⁵⁴ After those meetings Frankfurter wrote: “Men’s devotion to law is not profoundly rooted,” and noted that it was the most disturbing experience in his entire Supreme Court career. On another occasion he stated: “The manner in which the Supreme Court disposed of that case is one of the least edifying episodes in its modern history.”⁵⁵

 

CONCLUSIONS

In the closing sentence of his article on the legal aspects of the Rosenbergs’ trial, Michael Parrish wrote that the verdict highlighted the terrible possibility of the imposition of the death sentence on the basis of errors, prejudice or the deliberate misleading of the court. This and the verdict itself would continue to haunt the Supreme Court and the American legal system for many years.⁵⁶

The ‘witch hunt’ atmosphere created by McCarthyism at the beginning of the Cold War played its part in shaping the minds and decisions of key players in the Rosenberg affair. The majority of the American public supported anti-communist notions, as depicted in the media by politicians and journalists, especially after the shock and fear evoked by the Soviet success in detonating a nuclear device on 28 August 1949.

In her study Framing History: The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War,⁵⁷ Virginia Carmichael examined the role of the press in forming the public images of those involved in the affair. She concluded that the majority of the press chose to cooperate with anti-communist elements within the administration which had a vested interest in obtaining a conviction and chose to support the ‘official version’ of the Rosenberg affair without scrutinizing it or attempting to present a balanced picture of the events. Carmichael examined the myth that only the United States possessed the know-how to build the atom bomb and that these secrets were bought or stolen by Soviet agents. She found this belief to be very popular in the press and among politicians in their speeches on radio and television, and that it had a great influence on the public at the beginning of the Cold War.⁵⁸

In dealing with the issue of gender, Carmichael found that the press had tried to depict Ethel Rosenberg, the first woman to be executed in the United States since Mary Surratt (who was put to death for her part in President Lincoln’s murder) as cold and emotionless. This was done in order to prevent the public from developing empathy toward the jailed mother and to ensure public acceptance of the severe punishment imposed on her.⁵⁹ In denying their humanity, the prosecutor and the judge sought to desensitize the public and prevent any form of compassion toward the Rosenbergs so that the death sentence could be carried out. In 1955 the outstanding literary critic Leslie Fiedler maintained that their demonization and the effort to dehumanize them had made their execution possible.⁶⁰

The Rosenberg affair has continued to arouse interest long after its conclusion since a variety of aspects and questions have been left unanswered even fifty years after their execution. The Rosenbergs claimed their innocence, but most probably did indeed engage in espionage with their friends on behalf of the Soviet Union, as the newly discovered documents demonstrate. Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed, yet the question of the degree of Ethel’s involvement is a ground for serious debate. A wide consensus exists that she should not have been executed. Numerous legal experts point to several decisive flaws in the Rosenberg trial. The conduct of the judge and the prosecutor was highly unethical. They were tried under a law that did not apply to them when their activities took place. The Rosenbergs did not receive a good defense and their appeals were not deliberated fairly. Many came to the conclusion that they were executed as a result of an unjust trial. This question relates directly to the severity of the verdict and whether the death penalty was warranted in the case. Much controversy exists over the question of the influence of the anti-communist hysteria that prevailed at the time on the handling and outcome of the case.

The claim that the information supplied by Julius Rosenberg brought about the Soviet technological leap which enabled it to build the atom bomb has been demonstrated as far from the truth. It was a myth intentionally advanced by the prosecution and by anti-communist organizations. Radosh, Milton and others agree that Ethel’s punishment was extreme, as her guilt was never conclusively proved: the court, for various reasons, was anxious to execute the Rosenbergs. It should have contemplated the reasonable doubt in Ethel Rosenberg’s case. This, coupled with the fact that she was a mother of two small children, was ignored by the court, illustrating its anxiousness to execute her.⁶¹

Radosh and Milton claim that the prosecution sought the death penalty as a dual-pronged means of pressure: on Julius, to disclose the names of his associates in order to save himself and his wife, and on the public as a deterrent against such activities by others. The Russians attempted to take advantage of the death penalty, portraying it as proof of American antisemitism. Their goal was to divert public attention from their own rampant antisemitism, demonstrated especially in the Slansky trial in Czechoslovakia. Hence the execution had extreme importance in the propaganda war between the Soviet Union and the United States. As Radosh and Milton stated, “They [the Rosenbergs] were hapless scapegoats of a propaganda war – a war in which their deaths would be counted as a victory for both sides.”⁶²

Another important aspect of the Rosenberg affair was the unique dramatic side to the story: from mystery spy figures with code names (such as ‘Raymond’ and ‘Antenna’) through the global dimension (the Soviet Union, the US, Europe, the arrest of Fuchs in Britain, Sobell fleeing to Mexico), to elements bordering on the unbelievable and even humorous (the Jell-O box). Furthermore, the story was linked to a new and frightening weapon of mass destruction which even today arouses ‘doomsday’ fears and constitutes a clear and present threat that affects the fate of every living being in the universe. A traitor passed on the secrets, according to the myth, to “the evil empire” (as President Ronald Reagan labeled it years later). Many of the ingredients and aspects that were present in the 1950s are still valid today. Analyzing the reality of the early 1950s when it was all new and terrifying, against the backdrop of McCarthyism, and the Red Scare, made the loss of reason more understandable. The Rosenberg affair supposedly gave McCarthy’s allegations credence and for many provided proof of the great and imminent danger that Communists in the administration posed to the well-being and the very existence of the Free World..

The legal drama created by the press; the defendants who claimed there was a governmental conspiracy against them; witnesses who refused to testify (Sobell); other witnesses who incriminated family members (Greenglass); the appearance of public figures as witnesses (Bentley); and a surprise witness, the photographer (Schneider), who emerged as a result of the activities of an informer (Tartakow), all contributed to the spectacle. Another dramatic aspect of the affair was the touching love story between Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. This found expression in the love letters exchanged between the two while they were in jail.⁶³ Additionally, there was the impending execution of a mother of two young children, who demonstrated frequently and begged for their parents’ lives.

Every period of severe economic, political or social dislocation in American history has been followed by periods of hysteria, xenophobia, total disregard of basic American freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, violence and nativism. The post-World War II period was another excellent example of this phenomenon. McCarthyism was characterized by hysteria, loss of reason and antisemitism. All these themes highlighted the affair in which the Jewish ‘other’ came under severe attack, while other Jews sought to demonstrate their uncompromising and complete devotion to the United States and Americanism. America's loss of sole nuclear hegemony created great fears as did the tumultuous struggle between the USSR and the US in the Cold War. This was the background and the substance of this tragic affair. Radosh and Milton commended the Rosenbergs, who refused to be tried for their political beliefs and who confronted a judiciary system and hostile public opinion because of their devotion to their principles and ideals and for which they paid the ultimate price.⁶⁴

 

 

NOTES

 

1. Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File [hereafter, File] (New Haven, 1997), pp. 1-4, 270, 288. The foreman Vincent Lebonitte was the only juror whose name was tied to an antisemitic incident. A reporter for the AP News Agency discovered on his seat a scrap of paper on which the word “Jude” was written. He chose to pass this information to the FBI which brought it to the attention of the prosecutor Irving Saypol who ignored it. See Radosh and Milton, File, Footnote, p. 537.

2. Charles G. Cogan, “In the Shadow of Venona,” Intelligence and National Security 12 (1997), p. 194.

3. See Harvey Klehr, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven, 1995), especially on who joined the Communist Party during the Depression years and why.

4. Cogan, “In the Shadow of Venona,” p. 194.

5. Radosh and Milton, File, p. 29.

6. Among the finest studies on containment and the Cold War are Walter LaFeber, America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945–2000 (Boston, 2002); John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York, 1982); John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace (New York, 1987); Stephen Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938 (New York, 1997); Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men (New York, 1987). On the Committee of Un American Activities and McCarthyism, see Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (New York, 1990); Marjorie Garber and Rebecca L. Walkowitz (eds.), Secret Agents: The Rosenberg Case, McCarthyism, and Fifties America (New York, 1995); Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (Lexington, KY, 1970).

7. Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs was born in Germany in 1911. He joined the German Communist Party in the early 1930s and escaped from Germany to England when the Nazis came to power. He completed a doctorate in physics at Bristol University in 1937. Being an enemy alien he was placed in a detention camp during World War II. Due to his good connections he was released in 1941 and in 1943, he moved to Columbia University in New York City, where he was employed in the Manhattan Project. He was convicted of espionage and served nine of the fourteen years of his prison sentence. After he was released, he moved to East Germany where he was employed as a university physics instructor.

8. Radosh and Milton, File, pp. 14–15.

9. Harry Gold, son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, joined the Communist Party in his youth. In 1935 he began to spy for the Soviet Union. After his arrest he confessed and was sentenced to thirty years in prison.

10. Bloch was the defense attorney in the trial of the leader of the Communist Party in Pittsburgh and in the infamous ‘Trenton Six’ trial in 1948 in New Jersey. The ‘Trenton Six’ were six African-Americans who were condemned to death in a trial that became synonymous with a blatant miscarriage of justice. As a result of the outcry that resulted, especially by civil rights and left wing organizations, they were re-tried and exonerated.

11. Radosh and Milton, File, p. 99.

12. Saypol's most famous convictions were in the trials of Alger Hiss, William Remington, and Abraham Brothman. His success in convicting the Rosenbergs resulted in his nomination, within a few months, to the Supreme Court of New York State.

13. After the trial Roy Cohn became a top aide to Senator McCarthy in his anti-communist crusade. McCarthy’s downfall also signaled the end of Cohn’s public career.

14. Sam Roberts, who wrote the book, The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair (NY, 2001), interviewed David Greenglass in November 2001. Greenglass said that he had refused to consider escape from the United States and that together with Roy Cohn had fabricated the evidence against his sister. Greenglass continued that he did not know then and still does not know who typed the notes. He added that he was not sorry that he had lied and thus caused the death of his sister. In a television interview he told Bob Simon “I sleep well … every time this haunts me my wife tells me, ‘Look, we are still alive’.” When asked why the Rosenbergs had not cooperated with the prosecution in order to save their lives, he answered with a single word, “Stupidity.” New York Post, 21 Nov. 2001.

15. He told FBI investigators that his identification code was, “I came from Ben.” Radosh and Milton, File, pp. 45, 151.

16. The FBI learned about Ben Schneider from Jerome Tartakow, an informer who shared a prison cell with Julius Rosenberg, Radosh and Milton, File, pp. 264-5.

17. Irving R. Kaufman was considered a ‘wonder kid’ because he completed his undergraduate degree at the age of eighteen. At age twenty he was awarded his law degree. At the time of the Rosenbergs’ trial he was forty years old. Julius Rosenberg described him as a fusion of a rabbinical student and an army sergeant major. His inflexibility in the Rosenberg case and especially his conduct during the appeals resulted in severe criticism and impeded his professional advance. He ended his career as a judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

18. Radosh and Milton. File, p. 284.

19. Ibid., p. 452.

20. Twenty Israeli rabbis sent pardon requests to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

21. This correspondence can be read in Michael Meeropol (ed.). The Rosenberg Letters (Urbana, IL, 1994).

22. Emmanuel Bloch turned out to be another victim of the case. He died of a heart attack in 1954.

23. Jeffery M. Marker, “The Jewish Community and the Case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” The Maryland Historian 32 (1973), p. 105.

24. Marker, “The Jewish Community,” pp. 113–14.

25. Radosh and Milton, File, pp. 352–5.

26. Ibid., p. 355; Marker, “The Jewish Community,” pp. 112–13.

27. Marker, “The Jewish Community,” pp. 110–12.

28. On the Slansy trial, see Eugene Loebl, Sentenced and Tried: the Stalinist Purges in Czechoslovakia (London, 1969).

29. Marker, “The Jewish Community,” p. 116.

30. Ibid., pp. 118–19.

31. Ibid., pp. 106, 108.

32. Radosh and Milton, File, p. 326.

33. Ibid., pp. 329–30; Marker, “The Jewish Community,” pp. 109, 114

34. Radosh and Milton, File, p. 352

35. Marker, “The Jewish Community,” p. 114

36. Louis Nizer, The Implosion Conspiracy (Garden City, NY, 1973); Radosh and Milton, File; Walter and Miriam Schneir, Invitation to an Inquest (Garden City, NY, 1965); John Wexley, The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (New York, 1955); Jonathan Root, The Betrayers: The Rosenberg Case – A Reappraisal of an American Crisis (New York, 1963).

37. The National Security Agency website: http/www.nsa.gov/docs/venona/monographs/monograph-1.html, has extensive, detailed information on the Venona Cables.

38. Radosh and Milton, File, pp. xv–xxi contain an extensive description and analysis of the Venona Cables.

39. In the 1960s he was a KGB operative in Washington DC using the name Alexander Pumin.

40. The senior KGB representative in the United States was General Vassili Zublin. He oversaw Yakovlev 's operations

41. Michael Dobbs, “Julius Rosenberg Spied, Russian Says; Agent's Handler Contradicts Moscow in Controversial '50s Case,” The Washington Post, A-1, 16 March 1997.

42. Radosh ands Milton, File, pp. xiii-xiv, xxiii-xxix.

43. Ibid, pp. xi-xiii.

44. Michael E. Parrish, in review of Fatal Error: The Miscarriage of Justice that Sealed the Rosenbergs’ Fate, by Joseph H. Sharlitt (New York, 1989), in The Journal of American History 77(1990), p. 732; Radosh and Milton, File, p. 451.

45. Louis Nizer as quoted in Michael E. Parrish, “Cold War Justice,” American Historical Review 82 (1977), p. 807.

46. Ibid., pp. 809–10.

47. Radosh and Milton, File, pp. 275–90.

48. Parrish, “Cold War Justice,” pp. 813–14.

49. Parrish review, Fatal Error, p. 732.

50. Radosh and Milton, File, p. 452.

51. Parrish, “Cold War Justice,” pp. 812–13.

52. Radosh and Milton, File, pp. 455–70.

53. Ibid., pp. 188–93.

54. Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965), leading justice in US Supreme Court history. He was one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most senior advisors during the New Deal. A liberal, Harvard law professor, well-known for his battles against conservatives, such as in the Sacco-Vanzetti affair and the ‘blacklistings’ during the McCarthy era. See Parrish review of Fatal Error, p. 837.

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid., pp. 808, 842.

57. Virginia Carmichael, Framing History: The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War (Minneapolis, 1993).

58. Wanda Bershen, “Revisiting the Red Menace.” Book review of Framing History: The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War, by Virginia Carmichael, American Quarterly 49 (1997), p. 211. Anti-communist ‘documentary’ films for screen and television were produced by the government and by Hollywood. I Married a Communist (1953) – a sexy woman-spy; I Led Three Lives (1956) – about ‘the next-door neighbor’ who is actually a double agent, and which evolved into a TV series.

59. Bershen, “Revisiting the Red Menace,” p. 211.

60. Cushing Strout, “Reconsidering the Rosenbergs: History, Novel, Film,” Reviews in American History 12 (1984), p. 310.

61. Radosh and Milton, File, p. 451.

62. Ibid., pp. 451–3.

63. Michael Meeropol (ed.), The RosenbergLetters: A Complete Edition of the Prison Correspondence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (NY, 1994),

64. Robert Griffith and Athan Theoharris (eds.). The Specter: Original Essays on the Cold War and the Origins of McCarthyism (New York, 1974); Earl Latham, The Communist Conspiracy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy (Cambridge, Ma, 1966); Richard Polenberg, One Nation Divisible: Class, Race and Ethnicity in the United States since 1938 (New York, 1983); Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Rightwing Extremism in the United States 1790–1970 (New York, 1970); Radosh and Milton, File, pp. 452–3.

 

 

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