Rosenberg, Julius (1918-1953) and Ethel (1915-1953)

In 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg became the first Americans to be executed for espionage. Their conviction and execution were a crucial factor in the intensification of the Cold War in America, which in turn led to the phenomenon known as McCarthyism. Their guilt and the harshness of their sentence continue to be vigorously debated. The Rosenbergs have been viewed by leftist intellectuals as martyrs, conveniently sacrificed by an iniquitous United States in the name of anticommunism. They have been remembered for their deaths far more than for their lives and have been the subject of many books, articles, poems, plays, works of art, and documentaries.

Ethel (nee Greenglass) and Julius Rosenberg both hailed from the lower east side of Manhattan. Like many young Americans during the Depression, both became involved in leftist groups. They met at a union-sponsored party in 1936, and they were married in the summer of 1939. In 1943 they curtailed their official affiliation with the Communist party.

The explosion of an atomic bomb by Russia in 1949 led to a search for spies in the American government, and it was discovered that David Greenglass, Ethel's brother, had passed secret information to Soviet agents. Greenglass implicated the Rosenbergs in his confession, and the Rosenbergs were arrested. Their trial lasted from March 6th through March 29th, 1951, and after appeals they were executed on June 20, 1953. A young Richard Nixon made a name for himself as the congressional investigator who originally uncovered the Rosenbergs' crime.

The Rosenberg case divided Americans, many of whom believed the couple were innocent, and had a dramatic impact on U.S. leftists. In particular, it was a watershed for those New York Jewish intellectuals who had become anti-Stalinist, pro-American Cold Warriors. They used the Rosenberg case to dissociate themselves from their previous radicalism at a time when such activity was construed as un-American. U.S. Jewish leaders feared that the case would increase anti-Semitism as the public drew a link between Communism and the Jewishness of the Rosenbergs. Consequently, a great deal of effort was expended by liberal anticommunist organizations and anti-Stalinist intellectuals to dissociate Jews from the actions of the Rosenbergs.

A flurry of literary activity occurred that aimed to discredit the Rosenbergs and to prove the political loyalty of American Jewry. Liberal anticommunist Jewish intellectuals, in particular, Leslie Fiedler and Robert Warshow, wrote vicious critiques of the Rosenbergs. This bloc supported the prosecution's case and argued for the couple's execution. Liberal anticommunists, in contrast, countered these attacks by accusing the prosecution of anti-semitism. They pointed to the flimsiness of the evidence against the Rosenbergs and highlighted the plight of the Rosenbergs' two sons—Robert and Michael—who would be orphaned as a result of the government's actions.

The image of the Rosenbergs as sacrificial lambs, martyred by a complex of Cold War interests, has entered American popular culture. One of the earliest appearances of the Rosenbergs-as-martyrs theme is Arthur Miller's The Crucible (1953). The initials of the central protagonists—John and Elizabeth—have been construed as representing Julius and Ethel. In the post-Rosenberg era, further texts have appeared. The Rosenbergs figured in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1966), E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel (1971), and Robert Coover's The Public Burning (1977). Focusing on the idea of the Rosenbergs, rather than the factual detail of their lives and deaths, the latter two texts interspersed actual historical reality with fictional characterization in postmodern representations of the Rosenberg story. Other popular texts in which the Rosenbergs have appeared include John Updike's Couples (1964), Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1968), Howard Fast's The Outsider, Joyce Carol Oates' You Must Remember This (1988), Don DeLillo's Libra (1988), and Tema Nason's Ethel: A Fictional Autobiography (1990).

The imagery of the Rosenbergs was further extended in other media. In 1969 Donald Freed's multimedia play, Inquest, opened in Cleveland, Ohio. Freed's play highlighted the sensitivity that the Rosenberg case still aroused: the presiding Judge Kaufman contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation to complain that the play represented politically threatening procommunist propaganda. In 1993, Tony Kushner's two-part drama, Angels in America, was produced. Set in the Reagan era, the Rosenberg's prosecutor—Roy Cohn—figured prominently. Rosenberg iconography also animated visual artists. In 1988 an exhibit titled "Unknown Secrets" opened under the auspices of the Rosenberg-Era Art Project. Some of the works memorialized the Rosenbergs as Jewish victims of American injustice with titles such as Roy Judas Cohn, Remembering the Rosenbergs, and Robert Arneson's 2 Fried Commie Jews. Other works took a multimedia, postmodern approach that emphasized the Cold War context of the Rosenbergs' death.

—Nathan Abrams

Further Reading:

Carmichael, Virginia. Framing History: The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Garber, Marjorie, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, editors. Secret Agents: The Rosenberg Case, McCarthyism, and Fifties America. New York, Routledge, 1995.

Radosh, Ronald, and Joyce Milton. The Rosenberg File. 2nd edition.New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1997.

Ross, Andrew. No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York, Routledge, 1989.