hPARA `PAR@ ` hTEXT ` ZRosenberg, Ethel1915╨1953convicted spyBorn in New York City on September 28, 1915, Ethel Greenglass worked as a clerk for some years after her graduation from high school in 1931. She was already a member of the Communist party when she married Julius Rosenberg in June 1939. The next year Julius obtained a job as a civilian engineer with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and the two worked together to supply secret information to agents of the U.S.S.R. In 1943 Ethel Rosenberg╒s brother, David Greenglass, was inducted into the army and assigned to the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, as a machinist. Secret information stolen by Greenglass was passed to the Rosenbergs and by them to Harry Gold, a courier, who at length gave it to Anatoly A. Yakovlev, the Soviet vice-consul in New York City. Julius Rosenberg was fired by the army in 1945 for having lied about his party membership. In May 1950 Gold was arrested in connection with the case of confessed British spy Dr. 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 in March 1951; David 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 1917 Espionage Act 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. The case became a cause cÄlÅbre around the world, with civil libertarians, opponents of capital punishment, political sympathizers, and those who felt the trial had been unfair and the evidence perhaps falsified all organizing support for the Rosenbergs. The highly emotional so-called ╥death house letters╙ exchanged by Ethel and Julius Rosenberg during that period were widely published. In spite of all legal appeals and public protest, they were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, on June 19, 1953. They were the first U.S. civilians ever executed for espionage and the first Americans to suffer that penalty in peacetime. Their case remained a subject of controversy in the ensuing years.Photo: Scene from a Paris rally in support of the Rosenbergs. ╓styl `
