ETHEL AND JULIUS ROSENBERG

Julius Rosenberg (born in 1918, in New York) and his wife Ethel Rosenberg (born in 1915, in New York) were a communist couple arrested for spying for the USSR. Julius was stopped during July 1950 and Ethel suffered the same fate in August. They were judged as guilty on 5th April 1951 and executed on the electric chair on 19th June 1953 in the Sing Sing prison.

What made this case go worldwide was that in the middle of 1952, the communists started a global campaign to save the couple, declaring that they were innocent and victims of the new fascist America. The condemnation of the pair for espionage was said to only mask the anti-Semitism of the US power.

They received a lot of support, and efforts to spare them were numerous. The day before their execution for example, there was a demonstration in the streets of Paris, where people claimed that it was a blatant display of anticommunism. Nowadays, we know that they were indeed guilty, but the idea that in 1951 they had no way of being sure that they were not innocent, is worrying considering how quick they were to decide Julius and Ethel’s extreme punishment, death. By definition, McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence, so we can without doubt say that the Rosenbergs were victims of this phenomenon.