Preface
Ethel Rosenberg was electrocuted at Sing Sing prison on June 19, 1953, minutes after her husband had been put to death. Convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, Ethel was executed by the state at 8:16 that evening. Instantly her two sons, just 10 and 6 years old, became orphans.
In the nearly 70 years since her death, Ethel has been viewed in a polarizing way — either as a naive, dutiful wife or as a conniving, cold-hearted spy. Was she a patsy or was she a puppet master? Either unable or unwilling to name other alleged spies when pressed by prosecutors, Ethel Rosenberg refused to speak any last words in the moments before her death.
The woman with the beautiful voice, a “canary” in the slang of the 1940s, would not “sing like a canary” and become a government informer in the 1950s.
Whether or not Ethel engaged in treasonous behavior and betrayed her country, she herself was betrayed. Her brother later admitted that he had falsely testified against her.(1) Her country failed to give her a fair trial, according to legal scholars who argue Ethel was “framed by false evidence.”(2)
Well before all that, as a poor, Jewish woman living in New York City in the first half of the 20th century, Ethel also was betrayed by society and people’s views that existed during that era.
Growing up in a tenement on the Lower East Side and coming of age during the Great Depression. Ethel didn’t have to look far beyond the doorsteps of her family’s apartment on Sheriff Street to see those left in capitalism’s disruptive wake. Communism, and the promise of work and food for everyone, must have sounded like a utopia.
When Ethel was born in 1915, women in the United States did not yet have the right to vote. Women “in the family way” were rarely allowed to work. Employers viewed pregnancy as hindering the productivity of their women workers. The allure of having an equal role in a society in which women worked alongside men would have been powerful indeed.
The atheist mandate of Joseph Stalin’s USSR — as perceived by the idealistic daughter of Jewish immigrants — might also have been appealing. Ethel was in elementary school when Henry Ford blamed Jewish Americans for many of the nation's ills in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. On May 22, 1920, the paper's headline announced “The International Jew: The World's Problem.” Of Jews, Ford wrote critically, “Poor in his masses, he yet controls the world's finances...he has become the power behind many a throne.”(3)
In the years leading up to WWII, during a time of economic uncertainty, Jews were often targeted as scapegoats. In 1939, when the American Institute of Public Opinion asked if the US government should allow 10,000 Jewish refugee children to come into the country from Germany, 61 percent said “No.” (4) At the time, a cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.” (5)
So I can understand the attraction of communism. I can see the desire to aid an ally during WWII in the fight against Hitler. As a mother, I can also imagine the dissonance of wanting to do right by the world and wanting to do right by your children.
Sometimes those goals align. Sometimes they do not.
Ethel Rosenberg’s refusal to implicate others on charges of espionage, and her unwillingness to cooperate with the government, ended with her death. It was one last act of self-determination. "Cooperating" with prosecutors, she seemed to believe, would be a betrayal of her children and her legacy.
In a world that seemed to diminish her from all sides, betraying the promise of what her life could have been, Ethel remained loyal to herself. She did not betray her beliefs.
I was hooked by her story.
So I set out to write a creative non-fiction account. But for all of the literature, for which you’ll find citations at the end of this novel, there are many elements of this fascinating story that we just don’t know. What were the first 15 years of Ethel’s life like? Was she an avid reader, as I imagine? Did one of her teachers help in the formation of her fast-held beliefs?
And that’s where the creativity enters. This novel is a work of fiction, hung loosely on historical facts and events. Where appropriate, I have imagined conversations, often drawing upon some of Ethel’s personal letters to her attorney, to her husband and to her sons.(6) For me, it was as scary to let go of the facts in telling a story as it was freeing.
And while this is fiction, I believe the take-aways from Ethel's story are truths both universal and timeless.
While most of us will never be in a situation like Ethel's, we do encounter other forms of betrayal in our own lives. We see injustices, both big and small, in the workplace and in the world around us. Our parents, our governments and our religions may at some point along the way fall short of promises made. We are often forced to come to terms with a reality that doesn’t match our dreams and beliefs.
I hope my vision of Ethel’s story will help us better navigate the injustices, the inequities and the betrayals we face today — and motivate us to bring about positive change in the world in which such betrayals occur.
Without the deadly results.
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(1) 60 Minutes, “The Brothers Rosenberg,” reported by Anderson Cooper, produced by Andy Court, aired October 16, 2016 on CBS.
(2) Alan M. Dershowitz, “Rosenbergs Were Guilty — and Framed,” LA Times, July 25, 1995.
(3) Henry Ford, “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” The Dearborn Independent, May 22, 1920, Library of Congress.
(4) Ishaan Tharoor, “What Americans Thought of Jewish Refugees on the Eve of WWII,” Washington Post, November 17, 2015.
(5) Henry L. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust 1938-1945 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970), 150.
(6) Robert Meeropol and Michael Meeropol, We Are Your Sons (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1975).
Prologue
I died almost 70 years ago. I should say I was murdered, executed by the state on June 19, 1953. The time of death was 8:16 pm. Despite efforts to end my life before the Sabbath, which began at 8:12pm, my heart simply wouldn't stop beating.
In those precious moments as the sun dipped below the horizon, after two minutes and 7,000 volts of electricity were pumped into my body, my heart would not surrender. At least, not at first. It was some small satisfaction that I foiled their plans in that small way.
But my dears, our precious sons, your beating hearts and the lives of your children and their children throw the balance of the long game in our favor. The way in which you live, the people you've become, the people you've raised -- that in whole is a legacy that brings me great joy. This is the miracle of life over death, of a tiny sprout peeking up through a crack in the concrete. It is always bravely pushing upward to the bright and beautiful sun.
But what a price to pay. Just as water that does not flow to the seed betrays the plant, so too was I betrayed by love and support that did not flow to me. Convicted of betraying my country by the State, condemned as betraying my sons by my own family, the intervening decades have shown that I too was betrayed.
That is what this story is about.
