Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage in 1953. Whether or not they were both guilty remains unclear, though most historians believe that at least Ethel was innocent. Learn all about this historical stain in today's episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg?
For sure. And Ice-T didn't care. He's like, just watch. I'll be back in the most surprising way you can possibly imagine.
As literal Ice-T?
He's like, well, not that surprising.
Right. The second most surprising thing. You mean you play a cop on a TV show?
He said, yep, bingo. That's what he was known to say, bingo.
Oh, man. We're getting really sidetracked. This is a fun one. Who knew the Rosenbergs were going to bring this out?
I did not know.
So it was a three-week trial in all. Like you said, they, till the end, said they were not guilty. The trial concluded in March of 1951, guilty all three defendants. Sentenced the third guy, Morton Sobel, to 30 years in prison. Sentenced the Rosenbergs to death, saying their crime was worse than murder and that their work caused the communist aggression in Korea.
So they were really taking the fall for a lot here. There were a lot of appeals that were launched by Manny Block and company petitioning the Supreme Court delayed things by a couple of years. All of those failed. But he did launch a pretty successful media campaign that got a lot of people very interested in the Rosenberg's sentence.
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Chapter 5: What was the significance of the Rosenberg case?
And the boys, it's just still hard to believe they didn't, not that one of them didn't, you know, for the sake of being a parent to their kids, didn't recant, but they didn't. And those boys, Robert and Michael, were adopted by Ann and Abel Mirapole. Little interesting side note here. Abel wrote the song Strange Fruit. Which, have you ever heard the Susie and the Banshees version of that?
Ooh, no, but that's great.
Yeah, it's really good. That's how I first heard that song.
Another reference to the first Lollapalooza, even. Who knew?
Wow, that's really something.
Wow. I know, right? Did not expect that. Billy Joel is spinning in his piano stool right now.
He's like, I know I should have accepted that offer.
I know. Michael got a PhD in economics, and Robert Rosenberg became an attorney.
And both of them, they've dedicated their lives to trying to clear their parents' names. Finally, after years and years and years, they admitted, like, okay, dad was a spy, but not mom. Yeah. And you said that they were criticized by some people for basically choosing loyalty to Joseph Stalin over their two children and leaving them behind. And David Greenglass, again, who lied—
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