Ethel+and+Julius+Rosenberg+and+others-p.7

= = Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg were born and raised on the Lower East Side of New York City. Julius was born on September 29,1918, and Ethel on May 12, 1915. They got married in 1939. Julius started working for the United States Army Signal Corps as a civilian junior engineer in 1940, but in 1945 they fired him for being a communist. Julius then worked for Ethel’s brother David Greenglass in a machine shop they owned from 1946 to 1949.

From 1944 to 1945, David worked as a machinist on the project for making the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. David was arrested for spying for the Soviet Union in 1950. The information he passed was supposedly used to make the first Soviet atomic bomb. The Rosenberg’s were arrested and accused for also passing secret information on the atomic bomb for the Soviet Union.The FBI also claimed that Julius was the leader of a secret spy ring. They pleaded innocent.

Later in 1951, the Rosenbergs were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. They were sentenced to die in the electric chair. Some people in the U.S. and Europe thought that the Rosenberg trial was too harsh and they protested. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed in the electric chair June 19, 1953 at Sing Sing prison in Ossining, New York.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were an ordinary middle class couple with two young children Robert (Robby) and Michael. They lived together in a Brooklyn, New York neighborhood. Their ordinariness could have been what made many people doubt that they were really spies.



Klaus Fuchs

Klaus Fuchs was a German-born British scientist who worked on the construction of the first atomic bomb. Klaus Fuchs was suspected of being a Communist spy for the Soviet Union. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency found some shortwave radio transmissions to the Soviets and decoded a progress report of Americas Manhattan Project, making the atomic bomb. After this was found an investigator was sent to question Fuchs. The scientist easily admitted that he was a spy working for the Soviets. In the United States he was in contact with a person whose code name was “Raymond”. The FBI learned that “Raymond” was probably a man named Harry Gold, who fit Fuchs description. Gold was already under surveillance of the FBI in New York for being a courier for the communist. Gold read about Fuchs arrest in the paper and panicked. Then a few days later when the FBI was questioning he finally admitted: “I am the man to whom Klaus Fuchs gave the information on atomic energy.” Later, the FBI had Gold under further questioning and he told the FBI that in 1945, he was contacted by Anatoli Yakovlev. Yakovlev ordered him to meet in Albuquerque, New Mexico and get information from a soldier of the layout of the base at Los Alamos. The soldier was identified as David Greenglass.

The Rosenberg case is a very controversial trial, which has caused a lot of debate. Many people say “yes” that they were part of the communist party and it was a good think they were put to death because they were traitors to their country. Others say that they were innocent and there trial was too harsh. In the end, they were still sentenced to death with the electric chair.

Sources Cited: Reeves, Thomas C. “Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel.” World Book Online Reference Center. (Highland Middle School Learning Center. February 5, 2007.) [|http://www.worldbookonline.com.ezproxy.cooklib.org].

Monroe, Judy. The Rosenberg Cold War Spy Trial. Berkley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, Inc. 2001

Moss, Francis. The Rosenberg Espionage Case. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, Inc. 2000