The Rosenbergs -- 60 years ago today.

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On June 19, 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, age 37, were executed by electrocution at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY. They had been convicted earlier of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

What's your take on this, 60 years later? Were they guilty of anything more than just politically motivated stupidity? Is 'conspiracy', absent a charge of 'treason', sufficient grounds for the extreme penalty, particularly where it could not be shown that any act of theirs resulted in any death or injury? As a historical note, where did these solidly middle-class people with no security clearances somehow supposedly acquire any "atomic secrets" that they could then pass on?

Your comments welcomed.

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I don't know how much damage they did, but the intent was not good, considering they were passing information on one of the most powerful forces for destruction ever devised. I don't hold with the death penalty for anybody, but I don't feel any real sympathy.

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Julius was guilty- declassified Soviet files prove it. Ethel was probably not IMO.

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@JeffreyEqualityNewma,

It sticks in my mind that part of the reason they were sentenced to death was because they were Jewish. I might be wrong on this point. It happened a long time ago. If I am wrong I am sure someone will set me straight.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

On June 19, 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, age 37,
were executed by electrocution at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY.

No. Thay were electrocuted in execution of their death warrants.
Presumably, thay were executed from the prison,
after thay were killed (unless thay were buried within the prison).

Lustig Andrei wrote:

They had been convicted earlier of conspiring
to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Thay did not merely conspire;
thay executed the plot and the Russians got the secret data.

Lustig Andrei wrote:

What's your take on this, 60 years later?

I ratify my cheers of 1953!
Thay deserved worse.
Most of the time, I support the 8th Amendment.
In this case, I doubted its wisdom.
I 'd have slow burned them at the stake
and given their remains first to pigs and later, to Stalin.
My hostility and abhorrence to collectivism and to authoritarianism are truly un-limited.

Lustig Andrei wrote:

Were they guilty of anything more than just politically motivated stupidity?

Will u reveal
which act of stupidity u had specifically in mind ??

Lustig Andrei wrote:

Is 'conspiracy', absent a charge of 'treason', sufficient grounds for the extreme penalty,
particularly where it could not be shown that any act of theirs resulted in any death or injury?

I 'm trying to remember; the charge was espionage, right ?
Being in possession of American nuclear secrets,
Stalin began the Korean War.
The Rosenbergs de facto committed committed treason
in favor of our communist enemies,
tho thay were not criminally prosecuted for treason.

Lustig Andrei wrote:

As a historical note, where did these solidly middle-class people with no security clearances
somehow supposedly acquire any "atomic secrets" that they could then pass on?

Your comments welcomed.

Some of their fellow commies had those security clearances.
My memory is clouded with time qua all of the details.

David

1 Reply

@RABEL222,

RABEL222 wrote:

It sticks in my mind that part of the reason they were sentenced to death was because they were Jewish.
I might be wrong on this point. It happened a long time ago.
If I am wrong I am sure someone will set me straight.

My cheerful celebration of the execution of the Rosenbergs' death sentences
resulted from their de facto communist treason.
(Thay were convicted of espionage, as I remember, not of treason.)
That had nothing to do with their being Jewish. I have nothing against Jews.
Note that the US Attorney who prosecuted them was Jewish.
Note that the Judge who presided over their trial
and who imposed the death sentences was also Jewish.

Is it interesting that Alfred Ernst Rosenberg was an ideologist
for the 3rd Reich, including authoring its persecution of Jews,
who was hanged by the Allies in 1946 ?

David

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From Wikipedia:

Alfred Ernst Rosenberg (12 January 1893 – 16 October 1946) was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government. He is considered one of the main authors of key Nazi ideological creeds, including its racial theory, persecution of the Jews, Lebensraum, abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to "degenerate" modern art. He is also known for his rejection of Christianity,[1] having played an important role in the development of Positive Christianity, which he intended to be transitional to a new Nazi faith.[2] At Nuremberg he was tried, sentenced to death and executed by hanging as a war criminal and for crimes against humanity.

I wonder if he is among the "Rosenbergs" to whom Andy has reference . . . ?

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@OmSigDAVID,

Rosenberg has been and still is a quite common family name.

There are dozens of places called such - so many families got their name from those.
Then it has been a very popular name for Jews ... on various places, since centuries.

Julius Rosenberg was the son of Polish immigrants. The one you quoted, is from an Estonian Jewish family.

Certainly all are related ... from Eve and Adam onwards ...

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

The one you quoted, is from an Estonian Jewish family.

Let me see if I understand u accurately:
did u indicate that Alfred Ernst Rosenberg was of Estonian Jewish descent ??

David

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@OmSigDAVID,

Alfred Ernst Rosenberg (originally Альфред Вольдемарович Розенберг, ("Alfred Woldemarowitsch Rosenberg") "was born on 12 January 1893 in Reval (today's Tallinn, in Estonia, then part of the Russian Empire) to a family of Baltic Germans: his father, Waldemar Wilhelm Rosenberg, was a wealthy merchant from Latvia, his mother, Elfriede, was from Estonia. " (Quoted from wikipedia, YOUR OWN SOURCE, but any other source says the very same.)

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Alfred Ernst Rosenberg (originally Альфред Вольдемарович Розенберг, ("Alfred Woldemarowitsch Rosenberg") "was born on 12 January 1893 in Reval (today's Tallinn, in Estonia, then part of the Russian Empire) to a family of Baltic Germans: his father, Waldemar Wilhelm Rosenberg, was a wealthy merchant from Latvia, his mother, Elfriede, was from Estonia. " (Quoted from wikipedia, but any other source says the very same.)

I remain uncertain in regard to whether
it is your position that he was Jewish.
That is significant in that he was hanged in 1946
for having been an ideologist of the 3rd Reich,
allegedly authoring persecution of the Jews by the 3rd Reich
( maybe giving Hitler the idea ? )

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@OmSigDAVID,

According to some historians (like Ernst Piper in Piper, Alfred Rosenberg. Hitlers Chefideologe. Munich, 2005) all related family documents were destroyed by the Germans between 1941 and 1945.

I don't know what happened there, and actually I don't mind what ethic or religious background he had had.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

According to some historians (like Ernst Piper in Piper, Alfred Rosenberg. Hitlers Chefideologe. Munich, 2005) all related family documents were destroyed by the Germans between 1941 and 1945.

I don't know what happened there, and actually I don't mind what ethic or religious background he had had.

OK, so I believe that u r saying that we don't know whether he was or not.

With similar intent, I understand that Hitler had the German Army
use the place of his father 's birth as an artillery range,
thereby shredding the town and all of its contents,
including his father 's ethnic heritage (allegedly half Jewish).

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

I didn't say anything similar to "we don't know".

I didn't do any researches about Rosenberg myself, know just what's written by other historians.

What you write about Hitler's father (Alois Schicklgruber) is ... well, not true: neither the town and all its content was shredding nor is his father's ethnic heritage of any importance. (It was either Johann Nepomuk Hiedler or Johann Georg Hiedler.)

The legend and myth of a Jewish heritage has been refuted, well sourced, by the way, since decades.

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@Lustig Andrei,

I was eleven when the Rosenbergs were executed, so I wasn't very attentive but I must have heard about it on tv. I don't remember my parents discussing it, they having other things going on at the time, aka, my father's job.

I probably read about it in my twenties and thirties, but I don't remember reading articles pro them but faintly remember reading against their execution.

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@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Lustig Andrei wrote:
On June 19, 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, age 37,
were executed by electrocution at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY.
No. Thay were electrocuted in execution of their death warrants.
Presumably, thay were executed from the prison,
after thay were killed (unless thay were buried within the prison).

What nonsense you write, you ******* idiot! In the English we use on our planet, "executed" means "put to death, especially by carrying out a lawful sentence". They were executed. By electrocution. Exactly as Lustig Andrei wrote.

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@contrex,

David claims to be a member of Mensa. The idea of such a club always seemed silly to me, but since i've known David, my already low opinion of the organization has sunk even further.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

David claims to be a member of Mensa. The idea of such a club always seemed silly to me, but since i've known David, my already low opinion of the organization has sunk even further.

Years ago I responded to an advertisement by Mensa in a magazine, offering a "free test", and received in the mail an intelligence test to complete. I did this and got a reply telling me that for a fee of £20 (not a negligible sum in 1988) I could learn the result, and find out if I was eligible to join Mensa. I felt that this would be a waste of money, since (a) I have never, in the whole of my life, been anxious about my intelligence or lack of it and (b) the only people I had met who said they were members were jerks. This last is still the case.

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@RABEL222,

RABEL222 wrote:

It sticks in my mind that part of the reason they were sentenced to death was because they were Jewish. I might be wrong on this point. It happened a long time ago. If I am wrong I am sure someone will set me straight.

I've heard this nonsense before, a number of times. That the Rosenbergs happened to be Jewish was an unhappy coincidence. The judge who sentenced them to death and the chief prosecutor in the case both also happened to be Jewish. Kind'a hard to make a case of anti-Semitism under those circumstances, no?

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@contrex,

contrex wrote:

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Lustig Andrei wrote:
On June 19, 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, age 37,
were executed by electrocution at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY.
No. Thay were electrocuted in execution of their death warrants.
Presumably, thay were executed from the prison,
after thay were killed (unless thay were buried within the prison).

What nonsense you write, you ******* idiot! In the English we use on our planet, "executed" means "put to death, especially by carrying out a lawful sentence". They were executed. By electrocution. Exactly as Lustig Andrei wrote.

David's command of the English language is frequently flamboyant, seldom consistent with idiomatic norms. His cognition re: language leaves much to be desired.

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The Rosenbergs -- 60 years ago today.

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