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.We, who have just endured four of the warmest weeks the eastern two-thirds of the United States has experienced since we started keeping records, have been told repeatedly by media pundits that “you can’t attribute this particular spell of weather to global warming.” This statement, while true in a narrow sense, is false in a broader contextual sense. Worse, such “truths” are confusing and immobilizing. They make it more difficult to gather the impetus for the essential, society-wide behavior shift we need to avoid impending ecological catastrophes.
I spent the 59th anniversary of my parents’ execution speaking at Midrash, a progressive Jewish cultural center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I arrived in Rio on Sunday morning after an overnight flight from New York. My first presentation was not until Monday evening, but after resting on Sunday afternoon, I spent most of the next day doing television and newspaper interviews. On Monday I spoke following a showing of Sidney Lumet’s film, Daniel.
I spent the 59th anniversary of my parents’ execution speaking at Midrash, a progressive Jewish cultural center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was my intent to write about this trip immediately upon my return, but I’ve decided to let my reactions percolate a little longer and save them for next week’s blog.
I’m convinced that humans make a big deal out of anniversaries in multiples of 10 because we have ten fingers. The RFC is not immune to this trend. We’ve staged major programs in New York City on the 40th and 50th anniversary of my parents’ execution, and are already beginning to plan for the 60th in June 2013. But for me every anniversary is important, and whether I am marking it quietly at home or on stage before thousands, it is an emotionally laden time.
Periodically the media asks me to provide them with family photographs from before the time of my parents’ arrests. I tell them that the FBI seized all my family’s possessions when my parents were arrested including all their family snapshots, so all I have are a couple of pictures given to me later by relatives. As young adults my brother and I tried to retrieve our parents’ possessions, but were told that they had been destroyed or lost. Sometimes I imagine them stacked in a dusty corner of an impossibly large federal warehouse.