Ethel Rosenberg

[DeRigueurMortis]

Must admit I'd never heard of the Rosenberg's before reading this.

It's shocking and heartbreaking .

It seems she was an absolutely devoted mother, innocent of spying and executed by the US Govt when they decided to play a game of "chicken" with her and her husband, betrayed by her own brother who gave false testimony against her....

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/19/rosenbergs-executed-for-spying-1953-can-sons-reveal-truth?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

I read The Book of Daniel many years ago (late 80s maybe?) it was very disturbing. I was probably too young and immature for it, but I think I had already heard about the Rosenbergs then. The book triggered me to read more about them. There wasn't much, but the general consensus was that they were incident victims of Macarthyism and anti-Semitism. Jewish Communists, but not spies.

Interesting that Julius was actually a spy, albeit a fairly minor one. The government didn't want Ethel executed, yet was over-ruled. Was she penalised for standing up for her husband or for standing by her principles instead of her children in the way society expected her to? Or was she penalised, were both of them more severely penalised, because they were Jewish?

I thought I knew about The Rosenbergs but I hadn't realised Ethel's brother had testified against them.
It's such a shocking and upsetting story.
I think Hadley Freeman's writing gets better and better.

It's a heartbreak of complex betrayal of intimate relationships and a madness in social history.

@Floisme

I thought I knew about The Rosenbergs but I hadn't realised Ethel's brother had testified against them. It's such a shocking and upsetting story. I think Hadley Freeman's writing gets better and better.

Absolutely agree about Hadley.

She's imho one of the few beacons of light left at the Guardian.

That was a fascinating and very sad article. Hadley is great, her book House of Glass was excellent.

What impresses me about Hadley Freeman is how she takes interviewing Maria Carey just as seriously as she takes interviewing Michael and Robert Meeropol (The Rosenberg sons). I can't think of many other contemporary writers with that kind of range - in fact I can't think of any.

I first heard of the Rosenbergs when I read The Bell Jar, so looked them up.

Absolutely heartbreaking.

@DeRigueurMortis

Must admit I'd never heard of the Rosenberg's before reading this.

It's shocking and heartbreaking .

It seems she was an absolutely devoted mother, innocent of spying and executed by the US Govt when they decided to play a game of "chicken" with her and her husband, betrayed by her own brother who gave false testimony against her....

[[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/19/rosenbergs-executed-for-spying-1953-can-sons-reveal-truth?CMP=Share]]iOSAppp_Other

In 1953, the Soviet Union was ruled by Joseph Stalin. "Modern data for the whole of Stalin's rule was summarized by Timothy Snyder, who concluded that Stalinism caused six million direct deaths and nine million in total, including the deaths from deportation, hunger and Gulag deaths.[" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes Stalin " promoted repressive policies that conspicuously impacted Jews and, according to his successor Nikita Khrushchev and others, he fomented the doctors' plot as a pretext for further anti-Jewish repressions." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_and_antisemitism

It seems an oversight of the author's not to mention the sort of regime-as nasty as the Nazis'-that the Rosenberg's so enthusiastically supported.

I've seen the narrative change over the decades, from "They were both framed; they weren't spies" to "It was only ordinary military secrets; not Atomic ones", to "Yeah, he was a spy, but she just betrayed her country (perhaps) because she was a good wife.
"Morton Sobell – who had been convicted for espionage along with the Rosenbergs and served 18 years in Alcatraz – gave an interview to the New York Times. He said that he and Julius had been spies together, and confirmed that Julius had not helped the Russians build the bomb. “What he gave them was junk,” Sobell said of Julius, probably because he didn’t know anything about the bomb. Of Ethel, Sobell said, “She knew what he was doing, but what was she guilty of? Of being Julius’s wife.” Huh?
I get the impression that they could well both have been fanatics.

They were at the very least unlucky, since, unlike the Soviets, the US normally didn't execute spies except in times of war (and then, I think, very rarely).

"Julius was guilty, although the extent of his guilt was exaggerated in an attempt to scare him into naming names; Ethel was possibly complicit, but not culpable. “There’s a very binary idea of the political world, in which people are guilty or innocent, right or wrong. But understanding nuance is essential to understanding how politics work and how society works,” says Robert."

Ah. The non-binary thing again. Most people see it as very clear cut. If you give away military secrets, you endanger your country and are a traitor.

I also read about this today op and found it really harrowing - those poor boys. Thank goodness they were adopted by a decent couple afterwards.

I had a look for info on Ethel's brother and was really shocked at how utterly remorseless he was about the effect of his false testimony on the fate of his sister.

It was an excellent article. Hadley is such a good writer. One of the things that makes her good is that she's clearly an empathetic interviewer.

@RoyalCorgi

It was an excellent article. Hadley is such a good writer. One of the things that makes her good is that she's clearly an empathetic interviewer.

Would that she'd have some empathy for the people in the Soviet-occupied countries of Eastern Europe who would have prefered that e.g. the Kremlin weren't informed of troop strength, deployment, strategy...

I'm pretty sure that the Observer's sympathy would have been more muted if the info had been supplied to the Nazis.

Weren't millions of Stalin's victims mothers,daughters,sisters? What about what the Rosenbergs were doing to them?

The interview was with the Rosenberg's two sons who were 6 and 10 at the time of their parents' execution, and who I hope we can agree, whatever our views on the Rosenbergs, were entirely innocent.

I come second to none in my admiration for Hadley Freeman but here's a completely different take in a review of the recent book she refers to (should have a share token):

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/50cd404e-c2f8-11eb-8601-6a2ece3e4634?shareToken=d6ebc9057fd890648aad48edd71652aa

[quote somethingforyou]I come second to none in my admiration for Hadley Freeman but here's a completely different take in a review of the recent book she refers to (should have a share token):

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/50cd404e-c2f8-11eb-8601-6a2ece3e4634?shareToken=d6ebc9057fd890648aad48edd71652aa[/quote]

Wow a really interest counter read.

Thanks for posting that.

Always good to see alternative perspectives.

@Floisme

The interview was with the Rosenberg's two sons who were 6 and 10 at the time of their parents' execution, and who I hope we can agree, whatever our views on the Rosenbergs, were entirely innocent.

I believe that the Rosenbergs were spies and that they should not have been killed. Seeing their deaths as tragic does not equal supporting Stalin. It's complicated and controversial, even all these years later.

I believe that the Rosenbergs were spies and that they should not have been killed. Seeing their deaths as tragic does not equal supporting Stalin. It's complicated and controversial, even all these years later.

Agreed.

The Times piece was very interesting in offering up evidence that Ethel was very much engaged and supportive of her husband's espionage - rather than Sebba's narrative that she was largely oblivious to his activities.

Same wrt Sebba minimising the information Julius passed on to the Soviets - not perhaps as vital/impactful as the prosecution alleged but equally far from insignificant secrets.

It still doesn't take away her brothers betrayal, the brutality of their deaths and the impact on their children.

I'm pretty sure that the Observer's sympathy would have been more muted if the info had been supplied to the Nazis.

This.

[quote somethingforyou]I come second to none in my admiration for Hadley Freeman but here's a completely different take in a review of the recent book she refers to (should have a share token):

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/50cd404e-c2f8-11eb-8601-6a2ece3e4634?shareToken=d6ebc9057fd890648aad48edd71652aa[/quote]
Was just coming to post this. I've seen reviewers point out problems with a book before, but Kamm sounded really quite angry at this book.

"I’ve recounted Sebba’s thesis as fairly as I can, so let me add, without heat or rancour, that it is wildly false and the book is an intellectual disgrace."

Just to say I'm really glad I posted this.

It's been really interesting to read an alternative narrative and it's definitely made me think more widely about the relative perceptions of the Soviet vs Nazi regimes.

So thanks all for the input.

Well since my family lived in the USSR under Stalin and his successors perhaps I'm the only one here qualified to comment?

As Hadley writes in the piece, for those of you who can't read, the reason many Jews supported communism was because it was believed to be a counter to Fascism.

Very little information in the West was known about Stalin's torturous regime, certainly during the 1950s, because - being an authoritarian regime - information flow in and out was extremely tightly controlled.

It was only in the 1990s the Soviet Union finally collapsed and the true scale of what had gone under Communism was finally known.

Same with Stalin's and the Soviet Union's anti-semitism (incidentally, which was the first to masquerade as "anti-Zionism", the legacy of which we continue to see in the Labour Party today. The reason for the conflation of the two was because so many Soviet Jews were trying to escape the Soviet Union for Israel, a situation the Soviets were - correctly - worried would eventually harm the Soviet regime. Don't forget this was a regime where you literally needed to be given an exit visa to leave the country. So they were the first ones to start many of the blood libels we're familiar with today - Israelis like to kill children etc etc - because they were trying to sever the connection between Soviet Jews and Israel.)

The point is in the 1950s Jews in the West had very little knowledge of any of this.

So if you're reading about an American 37-year-old mother of 2 executed for a crime she didn't commit and thinking "she deserved it because Communism" shame on you.

And frankly, even if she was guilty her execution - and her husband's - was still a disgrace. As is clear from the fact the US has never executed any (non-Jewish) "traitors" since.

Yes he did sound angry - also exasperated I think?

Particularly about the lack of research and/omission of key facts.

I must confess that his review has definitely changed my perspective on many aspects of this case.

I still think that the death sentences were utterly brutal and feel very compassionate towards their children, but perhaps the bit he wrote that resonated with me was "Although Sebba advances the truism that in a free society “anyone is entitled to hold whatever political beliefs they want”, the Rosenbergs were not persecuted for their politics but convicted for their crimes."

In my mind, she was no innocent, was involved to some degree and definitely had knowledge of what her husband was doing.

I don’t think she deserved the death penalty though - that was unjust and a result of the paranoid Reds-under-the bed type atmosphere in the US at the time.

Death penalty used to play politics ? Say it ain't so ?

(Remember our current Home Secretary has plans to reintroduce hanging and has never made a secret of them).

And meanwhile in the UK Anthony Blunt was not only spared his life but retained his liberty, his knighthood and his position in the Royal household. Funny old world.