ROSENBERG, JULIUS; AND ROSENBERG, ETHEL

born May 12, 1918, New York, N.Y., U.S. died June 19, 1953, Ossining, N.Y. born Sept. 28, 1915, New York, N.Y., U.S. died June 19, 1953, Ossining, N.Y. Ethel Rosenberg ne Ethel Greenglass the first American civilians to be put to death for espionage and the first to suffer that penalty during peacetime. Ethel Greenglass worked as a clerk for some years after her graduation from high school in 1931. When she married Julius Rosenberg in 1939, the year he earned a degree in electrical engineering, the two were already active members of the Communist Party. The next year her husband obtained a job as a civilian engineer with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and the two worked together to turn over to the Soviet Union military secrets that came into their possession. Ethel's brother, Sergeant David Greenglass, assigned by the army to the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, as a machinist, gave the Rosenbergs data on nuclear weapons. This information was turned over to Harry Gold, a Swiss-born courier for the U.S. espionage ring, and by him to Anatoly A. Yakovlev, Soviet vice-consul in New York City. Julius Rosenberg was discharged by the army in 1945 for having lied about his party membership. Gold was arrested on May 23, 1950, in connection with the case of the British spy Klaus Fuchs. The arrests of Greenglass and Julius Rosenberg followed quickly in June and July and that of Ethel Rosenberg in August. Another conspirator, Morton Sobell, a classmate of Julius Rosenberg at the College of the City of New York, fled to Mexico but was extradited. The Rosenbergs were charged with espionage and brought to trial on March 6, 1951; Greenglass was the chief witness for the prosecution. They were found guilty and in April sentenced to death. (Sobell and Gold received 30-year prison terms, and Greenglass, who was tried separately, was given 15 years.) For two years the Rosenberg case was appealed through the courts and before world opinion. At issue were the constitutionality and applicability of the Espionage Act of 1917 under which they were tried and the impartiality of the trial judge, Irving R. Kaufman, who in pronouncing sentence had accused them of a crime "worse than murder." Seven different appeals reached the Supreme Court and were denied, and pleas for executive clemency were turned down by President Harry S. Truman in 1952 and by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. A worldwide campaign for mercy failed, and they were executed at Sing Sing Prison. Additional reading Ilene Philipson, Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths (1988, reissued 1993), is a biography. Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File, 2nd ed. (1997), examines the Rosenberg trial and judgment.