Ethel Rosenberg’s Sons Return to White House With Plea for Clemency — 63 Years Later
Image by Wikimedia Commons
By Dave Goldiner December 2, 2016
The sons of Ethel Rosenberg famously journeyed to the White House in 1953 to deliver a plea for clemency for their mom after she was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.
The plea fell on deaf ears when Dwight D. Eisenhower was in charge — and she was sent to the electric chair days later.
But 63 years later they returned on December 1 to ask President Obama to posthumously clear Rosenberg.
“We are giving the United States government the chance to acknowledge the injustice done to our mother,” said one son, Robert Meeropol, according to the Wsshington Post. “(It should) acknowledge the terrible wrong it did to her and to us.”
“After 40 years of research and struggle, we are …. again asking for presidential action,” said his brother, Michael.
There was no word on any immediate reaction from the White House.
The boys were 10 and 6 when they famously asked Eisenhower to grant clemency for their mother.
Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted as spies and executed in one of the darkest chapters of the Cold War and the anti-Communist Red Scare that swept America.
Historians say Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet spy, but decades of revelations cast serious doubts about the guilt of Ethel. Her brother admitted he lied about her involvement to save himself and his wife from prosecution.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
