Rosenberg, Ethel

History

In the early 1950's, the fate of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, convicted and sentenced to death on charges of having given information on the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, became an international cause. Viewed by many supporters as victims of Cold War hysteria and anti-communism, the Rosenbergs were the focus of an intensive effort by a number of organizations which attempted to save their lives through mass protests, petitions, and publication. Convicted in March 1951, they were initially given an execution date of April 5 of the same year. Through a number of legal and political manuevers, their execution was delayed for another two years.

The Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case was established in October 1951 with William A. Reuben as its provisional chairman. In February 1952 Joseph Brainin became the chairman and David Alman the executive secretary. The organization issued pamphlets attempting to provide new evidence that could be used to demand a new trial and calling into question the legitimacy of the original trial and the death sentence. Clemency petitions were filed and letter campaigns to Presidents Truman and Eisenhower were undertaken.

The Los Angeles Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case was a branch of the National Committee, and carried on similar work on a local level. The Los Angeles Committee also lobbied Senators and representatives of Congress and elicited support from community and labor organizations. Sophie Davidson was the Los Angeles chair.

The local committee provided support for a number of national actions, such as the National Clemency Gathering held in Washington D.C., when the Rosenberg's supporters rallied to try and obtain a stay of execution, this time when the execution was scheduled for January 12, 1953. The execution was postponed after a successful appeal to a higher court.

Other committees and conferences were formed around the Rosenberg case. In May 1953, a Conference of Inquiry was held, sponsored by such people as Rabbi Abraham Cronbach and Mary Church Terrell on the national level and by Rev. Stephen and Frances Fritchman, Robert W. Kenny, Robert S. Morris, John and Belle Clewe, Linus Pauling, and Dorothy and Daniel Marshall at the local level.

Despite the efforts of such groups as the Non-Partisan Committee for Clemency which was probably the organization that had called for the conference, the numerous defense committees were unable to prevent the execution of the Rosenbergs. They were executed at Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York on June 19, 1953.

Following the executions, the national and Los Angeles committees continued to operate, directing their attention to freeing Morton Sobell, who had been convicted along with the Rosenbergs. The committees, now the Rosenberg-Sobell National and Los Angeles Committees (or variations on that title) worked to free Sobell who had received a thirty-year prison sentence.

The Committee to Free Morton Sobell arose from the National Committee to Secure Justice for Morton Sobell, a separate organizations from the National Committee to secure Justice in the Rosenberg-Sobell Case. The Committee to Free Morton Sobell, cochaired by Sobell's wife Helen and mother Rose, seems to have started in the mid-1960s. The Sobell committees continued their campaigns in Sobell's behalf until he was released in January 1969.

In 1973, Michael and Robert Meeropol, the Rosenbergs' sons, who had been small children at the time of their parents' execution, publicly identifed themselves and spearheaded a campaign to vindicate them. They formed the National Committee to Re-open the Rosenberg Case, a major focus of which has been the release, under the Freedom of Information Act, of the FBI and other government files on the Rosenbergs.

From the guide to the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Papers, 1952-1979, (Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research.)