Jennifer Meeropol is the granddaughter of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and the daughter of RFC Founder, Robert Meeropol. Jenn became the Executive Director of the RFC on September 1, 2013. Prior posts on this page were written by Robert (unless otherwise noted), and represent his opinions, which are not necessarily shared by the RFC.
My grandparents were executed 70 years ago today. In their final letter to my father and uncle they wrote: “We died secure in the knowledge that others would carry on after us.” Since 1990, support from thousands of people allowed first my dad, and more recently me, to justify my grandparents' faith and convert the destruction that was visited upon our family into the Rosenberg Fund for Children.
This morning, June 16, 2023, Just Security published Robert and Michael Meeropol’s request to the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Archives to release the files related to their mother, Ethel Rosenberg.
Entitled "A Historic Cold War Execution on Espionage Charges: Information Delayed is Information Denied," their Op Ed begins:
Guest blog by Lauren Regan, Executive Director and Senior Staff Attorney for Civil Liberties Defense Center, www.cldc.org
I’ve spent a lot of time the last few months planning for the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of my grandparents’ executions. From initial brainstorming with the RFC staff and Board about what themes/issues we wanted to highlight to conversations about the format and timing and focus of the events to more recent efforts to draft and then finalize a script and film participants, it’s been an enormous amount of work.
At an RFC event years ago, one beneficiary made the point that in a perfect world, the RFC wouldn’t exist. It’s a strange concept to think about as an employee of such a special organization, but it’s true: in a perfect world, there would be absolutely no need for us. Egregious cases of targeting wouldn’t occur. Children of activists would be able to live safe and full lives without organizations like ours, and activist families wouldn’t have to live in constant states of uncertainty and fear.