Remembering the Rosenbergs 60 years on

 

It is a sad fact that few people remember the Rosenbergs today, but of course the Cubans do.  I took this picture of a poster in a Havana street in 2006. Havana is the only city in the world with a monument to this couple. Here below is a column by the Cuban journalist Manuel Yepe, translated by Walter Lippman.

SIX DECADES AFTER THE ROSENBERG EXECUTIONS
By Manuel E. Yepe

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

60 years ago, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the electric chair. It was the first execution in the history of the United States of civilians accused of espionage.

They were charged with investigating and transferring information on U.S. nuclear development to the Soviet Union, a clear manipulation in the typical context of the McCarthy period in the United States.

The influence of the left had grown in the difficult times of the economic crisis of the nineteen thirties and during the war against fascism.

After the Second World War, the United States establishment was trying to make capitalism stronger and safer domestically, and to build a consensus of support for the United States. The U.S. had emerged as the power least affected economically by the war and with the best conditions for the development of an effective imperialist hegemony. The left was weakened and isolated, both globally and internally.

Although the Communist Party's members were probably less than one hundred thousand in the United States, that political organization was a powerful force in the unions -which then had millions of members- as well as among artistic and intellectual circles in general. A growing number of citizens affected by the failure of the capitalist system had taken a favorable attitude toward communism and socialism.

The strongly anti-Communist environment and the fear of an imminent confrontation with the Soviet Union fueled by McCarthyism in American society joined with imputations such as responsibility for the growing number of casualties suffered by the U.S. in the war Washington was waging against Korea.

The prosecution fabricated statements and evidence obtained from people harassed for their political beliefs or associations and not for alleged illegal activities, in exchange for reducing their sentences or other concessions.

Julius Rosenberg had been an activist in the Young Communist League and this was the main pretext for linking him with the Soviet Union. Today we know that Ethel was involved only because she refused to cooperate with the prosecutors by testifying against her husband, Julius. It was well-known that she had not actively participated in the alleged acts of espionage of which her husband had been accused.

Among the many irregularities in the trial was the fact that they were given the death sentenc under the Espionage Act of 1917 for wartime; but at the time of the alleged espionage, the United States was not at war with the Soviet Union or any other nation.

The myth of the supposed "secret key to the atomic bomb" which Julius would have obtained and supplied to the Soviet Union was a total fallacy created by the prosecution as a pretext to justify  the death penalty.

On the evening of Friday June 19, 1953, in the prison execution chamber at Sing Sing, the FBI maintained an open phone line with Washington, thinking that the couple would rather confess to espionage activities than be executed. But Julius and Ethel chose to affirm their innocence even if it had to be at the cost of the electric chair which claimed their lives.

The worldwide campaign of protest against the sentence included personalities such as Albert Einstein, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, among other world-renown who called Presidents Truman and Eisenhower to prevent the crime; but all appeals were rejected.

At the last moment, a judge granted a stay of execution. But then another higher court overruled that act and sent special planes to bring back to Washington judges from different parts of the country who were on vacation so that the execution would be held on June 19, 1953.

It was an act of state terrorism because, while amidst the prevailing anti-Communist campaign, there were not many who identified with the Rosenbergs, the public would know what could happen to those whom the government considered "traitors" during the Cold War.

Shortly before being electrocuted, Ethel said: "I'm not alone, and I die with honor and dignity knowing that my husband and I will be vindicated by history."

Their two children, ages 6 and 9 years, targets of McCarthyism hatred were threatened and expelled from their schools. Today both fight against the death penalty and for human rights in their country. The Rosenberg couple will forever be heroes of humanity.

June 2013.