The emotional apex of Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America is the scene where Ethel Rosenberg’s ghost says Kaddish—the Jewish prayer for the dead—over the body of Roy Cohn in 1980s New York. Cohn was the lawyer responsible for the 1951 conviction and subsequent execution of her and her husband Julius. The idea of an innocent victim absolving her executioner’s crimes makes Kushner’s scene poignant. But moving as it is, the drama carries new meaning today: 55 years after the Rosenbergs met their fate in the electric chair, the Cold War’s most famous casualties have been recast in the annals of history.
Last month, Morton Sobell, the now-91-year-old co-defendant in the Rosenberg trial, confessed to The New York Times that both he and Julius Rosenberg were spying for the Russians.
Sobell’s remarkable admission followed the release of incriminating grand jury documents from the original 1951 trial, half a century after his adamant denial of involvement in Cold War espionage. The event brings years of American left-wing support, controversy, and speculation to a grinding halt.
Since their deaths in 1953, popular opinion has painted the Rosenbergs as no more sinister than members of the U.S. Communist party. Their widely presumed innocence had, by the time of Sobell’s confession, turned their story into an American tragedy. The two were sold out by Ethel’s own brother, and their death sentences issued at a time of such strident anti-Soviet paranoia that lawyers boasted jokingly that they could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. The Rosenbergs came to symbolize martyrdom to left-wing dissidents and fighters for civil liberties. Writer Jean-Paul Sartre called the case “a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation.”
Now, even the Rosenberg’s two sons—perhaps the world’s most recognizable Cold War orphans—are conceding their father’s guilt to the press after years of defending his innocence.
After over five decades, the proverbial jig is up for Julius Rosenberg. But what does this mean for Ethel?
Among the trial documents released by the U.S. federal court was a statement made by the Rosenbergs’ sister-in-law showing that the infraction for which Ethel was ultimately convicted, typing up key notes to give to the Soviets, was almost certainly false.
Prosecutors in the Rosenberg trial were especially hard on Ethel: they hoped to gain leverage over her husband in order to ultimately secure his confession. Both Ethel and Julius remained tight-lipped, ultimately put to death for Julius’ misdeeds.
What has historically been viewed as the joint tragedy of “the Rosenbergs” is a story that still rings with judicial injustice. More than a case of political witch-hunting, the real heartbreak is Ethel Rosenberg’s execution for refusing to hand over her husband. The ballad of the Rosenbergs might just be Ethel’s personal requiem.
