On Solidarity Day, over 50,000 people flock to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to protest, sing, hear speeches and demonstrate on behalf of national read more, Chinese American Vincent Chin, 27, is beaten in the head with a baseball bat by two white autoworkers in Detroiton June 19, 1982. In later interviews, he claimed: I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I dont remember, and, My wife is more important to me than my sister. Overall, their testimony remains controversial because of the deal, the lack of tangible evidence, and the conflicting statements. The three-year Rosenberg case culminated in their execution on Friday, 19 June, 1953, just minutes before the onset of the Jewish Sabbath. I think there could be some kind of exoneration, in that she was convicted on the basis of perjury, and for someone convicted on the basis of perjury, there should be a form of pardon. A letter from Michael and Robert Rosenberg pleading for the life of their parents. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were American Communists who captured and maintained world attention after being accused and convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.. This connection would be necessary as evidence if there was to be a conviction for espionage of the Rosenbergs. "My wife is more important to me than my sister. [30], On March 29, 1951, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage. The Rosenbergs were implicated by David Greenglass, Ethels younger brother and a former army sergeant and machinist at Los Alamos, the secret atomic bomb lab in New Mexico. Lawyers Emanuel Bloch and Alexander Bloch defended the Rosenbergs. His wife, born Ethel Greenglass, also in New York, on September 28, 1915, worked as a. Robert and Michael Rosenberg, Julius and Ethels six and 10 year old sons, pictured at the home of Bernard and Sonia Bach, friends of the Rosenbergs, New Jersey, before their parents execution. An American Tragedy By Anne Sebba. There was genuine fear that the Russians and Stalin would launch an atom bomb on America. The documents were not declassified until 1995. On June 19, 1968, a long-term anti-poverty demonstration known as Resurrection City reaches its high-water mark. He wrote Strange Fruit, a song made famous by Billie Holiday, and the royalties from that and other songs kept the family comfortable. [65], The Rosenbergs' two sons, Michael and Robert, spent years trying to prove the innocence of their parents. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. In early 1953, he wrote a letter to President Eisenhower, requesting that Ethel and Julius sentences be commuted to prison. 8/7/1950 David Greenglass witness testimony. T he case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the young Jewish American couple executed in June 1953 at the height of the cold war for allegedly passing atomic secrets to the Russians, has weighed . The network included: engineers (Julius Rosenberg, Nathan Sussman, Joel Barr, Alfred Sarant,Morton Sobell), a military aviation scientist (William Perl), a civil design engineer (McNutt), and a machinist (Greenglass), among others. The Rosenberg Case. A campaign was started to try to prevent the couple's execution. On March 29 they were found guilty, and on April 5 the couple was sentenced to death. (Sobell and Gold received 30-year prison terms, and Greenglass, who was tried separately, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.) The son of working-class read more. The direct evidence of the Rosenbergs involvement came from the confessions and testimonies of David and Ruth Greenglass. Just ten days before the start of the Rosenbergs trial in February 1951, David Greenglass re-testified, and changed his original statements. That same year, the FBI arrested both Greenglass and Gold based on information provided by Fuchs. The arrests of Greenglass and Julius Rosenberg followed quickly in June and July, and Ethel was arrested in August. At a time when American fears about communism were high, the Rosenbergs did not receive support from mainstream Jewish organizations. Documents cover, among many other topics, US intelligence activities, including FBI-CIA cooperation; USSR intelligence activities; the Rosenberg espionage network's collection against the US atomic energy program; their attempts to protect the network as US . In the following year Julius obtained a job as a civilian engineer with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and he and Ethel began working together to disclose U.S. military secrets to the Soviet Union. Her children were shunted around and then went into care. They provided top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and valuable nuclear weapon designs. In 2021 Ethel's sons restarted the campaign to pardon Ethel, as they were more optimistic that President Biden will consider this favorably. A mix of June and 19th, Juneteenth has become a day to commemorate the end of slavery in America. Two more electric shocks were applied, and at the conclusion eyewitnesses reported that smoke rose from her head. Ethel was arrested two months later. [46] The Times reported that 500 people attended, while some 10,000 stood outside:[50], The bodies had been brought from Sing Sing prison by the national "Rosenberg committee" which undertook the funeral arrangements, and an all-night vigil was held in one of the largest mortuary chapels in Brooklyn. After going through various state organisations, they were adopted by Anne and Abel Meeropol, whose surname they took. I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. [18][19], On July 17, 1950, Julius Rosenberg was arrested on suspicion of espionage[20] based on David Greenglass's confession. Fuchs was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, and he confessed to spying for the Soviet Union. Decrypted cables revealed this information through theVenona project. "Injustice", Sutton Publishing. He worked for a time at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where research was going on into radar, missile controls and electronics. FBI agents took her into custody as she left the courthouse. He had been recruited to spy for the Soviet Union which was far from uncommon in those days and he subsequently passed on information about what was happening at Fort Monmouth. In the United States of the late 1940s and 1950s, Fear was the overriding motif of the age, and fear breeds hysteria, Sebba says. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the U.S., the program continued during the Cold War when it was considered an enemy. I have spent ages agonising over that. [68], Numerous articles were published in 2008 related to the Rosenberg case. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg sitting in police van after being convicted of espionage. She became involved in labor disputes and joined the Young Communist League, where she met Julius in 1936. The Meeropols were both teachers, and Abel was also a lyricist. [76][24], In 2015, following the most recent grand jury transcript release, Michael and Robert Meeropol called on U.S. President Barack Obama's administration to acknowledge that Ethel Rosenberg's conviction and execution was wrongful and to issue a proclamation exonerating her. It was the wrong advice to them to go on pleading the Fifth Amendment because it made it seem as if they were on trial for being communists, which at some subliminal level, of course they were. Magic, witch-hunts, autos-da-f, sacrifices we are here getting to the point: your country is sick with fear you are afraid of the shadow of your own bomb. Follow Russia Beyond on Telegram. [17], On June 15, 1950, David Greenglass was arrested by the FBI for espionage and soon confessed to having passed secret information on to the USSR through Gold. The American pair were . I ask Sebba how culpable she thinks Julius Rosenberg was in his wifes death sentence. Because of the Venona documents, they now believe that Julius was a Soviet spy. read more, When the clock struck midnight on June 19, 2014, King Juan Carlos I of Spains nearly 40-year reign came to an end. After Semyonov was recalled to Moscow in 1944 his duties were taken over by Feklisov. Author of. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Others argue that Julius and Ethel were guilty, with Ethel playing a minor role, but that their trial and sentence were unjust due to the lack of evidence. He later served 10 years in prison. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. J. As a young attorney in 1951, Cohn pushed for the execution of Meeropol's grandparents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges. The extent of the Rosenbergs' activities came to light, however, when the U.S. government declassified information about them after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs were the first American civilians to die for spying. The debate over her involvement is ongoing. He also claimed that his sister Ethel's husband Julius Rosenberg had convinced David's wife Ruth to recruit him while visiting him in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1944. The Soviet Union secretly conducted its first atomic weapons test on August 29, 1949. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Many commentators of the time argued that the death penalty was used unjustly in the courts as a way to force the Rosenbergs and others to confess to espionage, or to name others involved. They hoped merely by arresting her on these trumped-up charges, surely Julius would talk, because thats what everyone else had done.. Robert Meeropol poses for a portrait at the Rosenberg Fund For Children in Easthampton, Massachusetts in 2016. The Rosenbergs turned over this information to Harry Gold, a Swiss-born courier for the espionage ring, who then passed it to Anatoly A. Yakovlev, the Soviet Unions vice-consul in New York City. Walter Schneir, inFinal Verdict, argues that evidence against Ethel was fabricated by the Greenglasses. They were sentenced to death on April 5 under Section 2 of the Espionage Act of 1917,[31] which provides that anyone convicted of transmitting or attempting to transmit to a foreign government "information relating to the national defense" may be imprisoned for life or put to death. I ask if she can think of a modern equivalent of Ethels predicament: incarceration by association. In 1990, he founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a nonprofit foundation that provides support for children of targeted liberal activists, and youth who are targeted as activists. For two years the Rosenberg case was appealed through the courts and before world opinion. Ethels own brother, David Greenglass, testified against her, in a blatant act of perjury. The project aimed to gather and decode messages sent by Soviet military intelligence (KGB and GRU) to the U.S. Venona would also help the government locate spy rings. Her death was so barbaric. [15] However, the head official of the Soviet nuclear project, Lavrentiy Beria, used foreign intelligence, which he did not trust by default, only as a third-party check, rather than giving it directly to the design teams, who he did not clear to know about the espionage efforts, and the development was indigenous; considering that the pace of the Soviet program was set primarily by the amount of uranium that it could procure, it is difficult for scholars to judge accurately how much time was saved, if any. Du Bois wrote a poem titled "The Rosenbergs", which began "Crucify us, Vengeance of God, as we crucify two more Jews" and ended "Who has been crowned on yonder stair? He also named Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as contacts and denied that his wife, Ruth Greenglass, was involved with any espionage activities. Now, however, Greenglass claimed that this exchange occurred in the living room of the Rosenbergs New York apartment, and that Ethel was present. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to receive that penalty during peacetime. J. Edgar Hooverpublicly opposed the trial. Theodore Hallis one example. A member of the Young Communist League in the early 1930s, it was through her activism with the Communist Party that she met Julius Rosenberg in 1936. Some reports claim that the Rosenbergs were offered a plea deal, where admittance of their guilt would grant them a prison sentence. [11], Rosenberg provided thousands of classified reports from Emerson Radio, including a complete proximity fuse. The minutes count. Ethel Greenglass, (respectively, born Sept. 28, 1915, New York, N.Y., U.S.died June 19, 1953, Ossining, N.Y.; born May 12, 1918, New York, N.Y., U.S.died June 19, 1953, Ossining, N.Y.), U.S. spies. He stated, "I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister. He was U.S. citizen and electrical engineer. "[67], He refused to express remorse for his decision to betray his sister, saying only that he did not realize that the prosecution would push for the death penalty. [72], The notebooks make clear that the KGB considered Julius Rosenberg an effective agent and his wife Ethel an enthusiastic supporter of his work. [24], After the publication of an investigative series in the National Guardian and the formation of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, some Americans came to believe both Rosenbergs were innocent or had received too harsh a sentence, particularly Ethel. Abandoning that effort, he returned to Mexico City. Trial and Execution. McNutt's employment provided access to secrets about processes for manufacturing weapons-grade uranium. In 2015 an independent lawsuit secured the release of grand jury testimony in 1950 by Greenglass, which indicated that he might have lied at trial by exaggerating his sisters role in the espionage ring in order to obscure the more extensive involvement of his wife Ruth, who was not prosecuted. In 1940, Julius joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a civilian engineer. In 2014, five historians concluded thatSoviet documents show Ethel was actively involved and attended meetings with Julius and his sources, but that there is no evidence to suggest she typed specific notes. Or was he more likely to get off by pleading innocence for both of them? "[70], He said that he thought the hand-drawn diagrams and other atomic-bomb details that were acquired by David Greenglass and passed to Julius were of "little value" to the Soviet Union, and were used only to corroborate what they had already learned from the other atomic spies. Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg ne Ethel Greenglass, (respectively, born May 12, 1918, New York, New York, U.S.died June 19, 1953, Ossining, New York; born September 28, 1915, New York Citydied June 19, 1953, Ossining), the first American civilians to be executed for conspiracy to commit espionage and the first to suffer [60], In 1995, the U.S. government made public many documents decoded by the Venona project, showing Julius Rosenberg's role as part of a productive ring of spies. Few trials in American history can match that of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for its sensationalism. There was a fear of communism.. They were married in 1939, by which time they were already active in the Communist Party. Some scholars argue that if it would have been possible to use Venona documents in court, both Hall and McNutt would have been revealed as spies and prosecuted, along with Greenglass and Fuchs. Copyright 2022 by the Atomic Heritage Foundation. This love of Communism and the Soviet Union soon led them into a Soviet espionage ring.. He does, however, believe that the prosecutors worked to guarantee a conviction and abused the legal system. [74], Michael's daughter, Ivy Meeropol, directed a 2004 documentary about her grandparents, Heir to an Execution, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival. The Greenglasses never withdrew their new testimony. Whether it was fair or not, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the only two American civilians who were executed for espionage-related crimes during the entire Cold War. But this testimony was not shown to lawyers during the Rosenbergs trial. Cohn would go on later to work for Senator Joseph McCarthy, appointed as chief counsel to the investigations subcommittee during McCarthy's tenure as chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee. He admitted that he had given documents to the Soviet contact, but said these had to do with defensive radar and weaponry. Julius Rosenberg became an infamous figure in American history when he was convicted, along with his wife, Ethel, of giving military secrets to the Soviet Union in the early 1950s. He stated that Julius asked him to help provide secrets about atomic weapons so that Julius could pass on the information to the USSR. In the scant three years between her arrest and. Built in an English shipyard and sold to the Confederates in 1861, the Alabama was a state-of-the-art ship220 read more, After 14 Formula One race car drivers withdraw due to safety concerns over the Michelin-made tires on their vehicles, German driver Michael Schumacher wins a less-than-satisfying victory at the United States Grand Prix on June 19, 2005. Robert wrote a later memoir, An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey (2003). Due to Red Scare trials and newspaper headlines, Americans in the 1940s, and 1950s knew that Soviet espionage was serious. Members of the communist party, the Rosenbergs were convicted of passing secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union in 1945. [42] Pope Pius XII appealed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower to spare the couple, but Eisenhower refused on February 11, 1953. But they would have been better advised to have said straight up, yes we are communists, but no, we are not spies.. Case Summary. Schneir argues that Ruth worked alone and met with a Soviet agent to deliver a sketch of a bomb, which was placed in a KGB file center on December 27, 1945. [73][24], After Morton Sobell's 2008 confession, they acknowledged their father had been involved in espionage, but said that whatever atomic bomb information he passed to the Russians was, at best, superfluous, that the case was riddled with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, that their mother was convicted on flimsy evidence to place leverage on her husband, and that neither deserved the death penalty. The West was shocked by the speed with which the Soviets were able to stage their first nuclear test, "Joe 1", on August 29, 1949. He also worked withKlaus Fuchs, a physicist at Los Alamos and Soviet spy, to pass on atomic research secrets. During his bachelor party at a club on the night of June 19, Chin and three friends were read more, On June 15, 2006, on the remote island of Spitsbergen halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland lay the ceremonial first stone of the Global Seed Vault. Harvard Law professorAlan Dershowitzstated that the Rosenbergs were guilty and framed, suggesting that they were spies, but that evidence was still fabricated against them, causing them to have an unjust trial and punishment. They married in 1939. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths, by the electric chair. I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding fifty thousand and who knows how many millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason.. [11], In February 1944, Rosenberg succeeded in recruiting a second source of Manhattan Project information, engineer Russell McNutt, who worked on designs for the plants at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Rosenberg children were permitted to visit their parents during their incarceration. Julius became a leader in the Young Communist League USA while at City College of New York during the Great Depression. She didnt cry in public, and the media gleefully judged her unfeeling and, by implication, guilty of the accused crime, as a result. John Charles Fremont of California, the famous explorer of the West, was nominated for the presidency, and William Lewis Dayton of New read more, On June 19, 1944, in what would become known as the Marianas Turkey Shoot, U.S. carrier-based fighters decimate the Japanese Fleet with only a minimum of losses in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Ethel's execution did not go smoothly. [69], In 2008, Morton Sobell was interviewed after the revelations from grand jury testimony. ETHEL ROSENBERG. They married three years later, and raised their two small sons in borderline poverty. In the intervening decades, it has since been conclusively proved that David Greenglass committed perjury against his own sister. This April 5, 1951, Universal Newsreel reports on the death penalty for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. [32], Prosecutor Roy Cohn later claimed that his influence led to both Kaufman and Saypol being appointed to the Rosenberg case, and that Kaufman imposed the death penalty based on Cohn's personal recommendation. A worldwide campaign for mercy failed, and the Rosenbergs were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. He said the Soviets had developed their own bomb by trial and error. [11] By this time, following the invasion by Nazi Germany in June 1941, the Soviet Union had become an ally of the Western powers, which included the United States after Pearl Harbor. I think it is the most horrific story, Sebba says. As a result of this new testimony, all charges against Ruth Greenglass were dropped. Sobell and Julius Rosenberg, classmates together in college, dedicated themselves to the cause of Communism. Their case against Ethel Rosenberg was resolved 10 days before the start of the trial, when David and Ruth Greenglass were interviewed a second time. On June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, are executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. forces. The documents suggest his involvement was with military and industrial espionage, rather than atomic espionage, as previously believed. She describes Julius Rosenberg as a naive idealist. This collection provides interesting Agency insights on this post-WWII spy case. [45], The execution was scheduled for 11p.m. that evening, during the Sabbath, which begins and ends around sunset. In 1861, the liberal Mexican Benito Juarez became president of a country in financial read more, In Music Fund Hall in Philadelphia, the first national convention of the Republican Party, founded two years before, comes to its conclusion. (The former was released as the motion picture Daniel in 1983.) David originally had said that he had passed the atomic data he had collected to Julius on a New York street corner. Can their sons reveal the truth? All rights reserved. This declassified information included a trove of decoded Soviet cables (code-name: Venona), which detailed Julius's role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets, and information about Ethel's role as an accessory who helped recruit her brother David into the spy ring and did clerical tasks such as typing up documents that Julius then passed to the Soviets. She and David met in the YCL, and married in 1942. 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. They were both found guilty. In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage under the U.S. [52][53][54], Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, investigated how much the Soviet spy ring helped the USSR to build their bomb. Online Documents. This request was denied. The US government offered to spare the lives of both Julius and Ethel if Julius provided the names of other spies and they admitted their guilt. The second son of read more. [79] In January 2017 Senator Elizabeth Warren sent Obama a letter requesting consideration of the exoneration request. He then claimed that he passed this information to Julius on a New York street corner, and that Ethel was not involved. "[56], Boris V. Brokhovich, the engineer who later became director of Chelyabinsk-40, the plutonium production reactor and extraction facility that the Soviet Union used to create its first bomb material, alleged that Khrushchev was a "silly fool". "[52], At the grand jury, Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn't you write [the information] down on a piece of paper?" [10], According to a 2001 book by his former handler Alexander Feklisov, Rosenberg was originally recruited to spy for the interior ministry of the Soviet Union, NKVD, on Labor Day 1942 by former spymaster Semyon Semyonov. In contrast to the American media, European newspapers did not support the ruling, and there were some protests against it throughout Europe. This new testimony, now against Julius and Ethel, was part of a deal granted to the Greenglasses. He was discharged when the U.S. Army discovered his previous membership in the Communist Party. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Despite massive, worldwide protest, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953, at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY. "We got nothing from the Rosenbergs. By 1945, the Soviets considered Rosenberg and his espionage network to be providing valuable information. The documents also suggest the Ethel acted as an accessory to her husbands activity, but that she did not play a principal role. Would they have believed him? Many Americans, however, believed that the Rosenbergs had been dealt with justly. Mr. Bloch [their counsel], who delivered one of the main orations, bitterly exclaimed that America was "living under the heel of a military dictator garbed in civilian attire": the Rosenbergs were "Sweet. ", In 1953, socialist historian W. E. B. [26] Julius and Ethel were put under pressure to incriminate others involved in the spy ring. Some scholars believe thatRuth may have been the individual to type notes, due to her past involvement with the Communist Party, and conflicting statements made by David. The couple were the only two American civilians to be executed for the crime of espionage during the Cold War.. Their case has been at the center of the controversy over communism in the United States ever since, with supporters . Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They were both found guilty of the crimes of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. [24] They were adopted by the social activist Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne, and assumed the Meeropol surname. Rosenberg's arrest had been preceded by the arrest of Harry Gold and David Greenglass, Rosenberg's brother-in-law, and was to be followed three and a half weeks later by the arrest of his wife, Ethel. There are some conflicting assessments among historians regarding the outcome of the Rosenberg trial. Documents relating to the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Case, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, A statement by the Rosenberg's sons in support of their exoneration, An Interview with Robert Meeropol about the adoption, National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case, Annotated bibliography for Ethel Rosenberg from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues, Annotated bibliography for Julius Rosenberg from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues, The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), Rosenberg Son: "My Parents Were Executed Under the Unconstitutional Espionage Act", History on Trial: The Rosenberg Case in E.L. Doctorow's, Julius Rosenberg at court sentenced to death, The WSWS speaks to Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs son An interview with Robert Meeropol, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg&oldid=1142051620, American people convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2021, Articles with failed verification from November 2022, Articles with French-language sources (fr), Wikipedia external links cleanup from October 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Images of the Rosenbergs are engraved on a memorial in, The execution is explored in great detail and serves as the premise of, Clune, Lori. Getty Images. Except that is not what happened. [80][81] [21][22] The U.S. government claimed Sobell was arrested by the Mexican police for bank robbery on August 16, 1950, and extradited the next day to the United States in Laredo, Texas. Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted, as were David Greenglass and Anatoli Yakovlev. Greenglass, who himself had confessed to providing nuclear secrets to the Soviets through an intermediary, testified against his sister and brother-in-law in court. Gold was arrested on May 23, 1950, in connection with the case of the British spy Klaus Fuchs, who had been arrested for giving U.S. and British nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. And, in fact, the Rosenbergs themselves essentially believed that they had done nothing wrong in the grand scheme of things. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, orig. Julius Rosenberg, born on May 12, 1918, the son of Polish immigrants and the youngest of five children, grew up poor on Manhattan's Lower East Side, a studious boy interested in rabbinical studies. 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