Join us on Dec 7th at 10:30am (eastern) for a virtual update on the campaign to exonerate Ethel Rosenberg! World Fellowship Center hosts RFC Founder, Robert Meeropol, and Executive Director, Jennifer Meeropol, for a discussion about the recently relaunched campaign to Exonerate Ethel. This program will have time for Q&A and will conclude with a discussion of lessons learned from intergenerational organizing.
Love this new piece from author and Professor of History, Lori Clune. A previously secret memo declassified in Aug 2024 revealed a stunning admission by a top U.S. codebreaker three years before Ethel Rosenberg's execution: the government knew Ethel was not a spy.
This information changed Clune's mind about Ethel. She writes, "I now believe that a presidential exoneration is appropriate and necessary because it will correct the view that Ethel was an active spy. It will address the serious flaws in her trial and conviction. And it will set right the historical record."
When Ethel Rosenberg was executed in 1953, her sons were just 6 and 10 years old. In the nearly three years before then, she was an imprisoned mother painfully separated from her family. As a loving caregiver of her two young sons, the U.S. government robbed them of precious time together and the vital support she provided them.
New coverage of the campaign to Exonerate Ethel in Bloomberg this morning!
"Now in their late 70s and early 80s, the Meeropol brothers described to me in a recent interview how they have devoted more than half their lives hunting for a secret, smoking gun document that would prove that the US government knew their mother wasn’t a Soviet asset. They’ve long been convinced that such a document was locked away in a filing cabinet somewhere in the bowels of a US spy agency.
Finally, they say, their quest is now over."
Last week, RFC Founder Robert Meeropol spoke with RFC Board member Bill Newman and Buz Eisenberg about the newly declassified NSA memo about his mother, Ethel Rosenberg, and the effort to exonerate her. Full interview courtesy of WHMP.
Sign the petition to Exonerate Ethel at www.rfc.org/ethel.
Today is Ethel Rosenberg's birthday. The labor activist, loving wife and mother was charged and convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage alongside her husband, Julius, during the height of the McCarthy era Red Scare. They were sentenced to death and unjustly executed 71 years ago in 1953, orphaning their two young sons.
On this day in 2015, NYC Council members gathered for a ceremony on the steps of City Hall, with three generations of Ethel's descendants present, to issue a proclamation in her honor, stating in part that "the government wrongfully executed Ethel Rosenberg."
Thanks to the Daily Hampshire Gazette for the front page feature this week on the Exonerate Ethel Rosenberg campaign! https://www.gazettenet.com/Ethel-Rosenberg-petition-57080365
>> Sign the petition to Exonerate Ethel: www.rfc.org/ethel
MassLive reports: a newly declassified NSA memo reveals the US government knew that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy long before she was convicted and executed.
"She [RFC Exec Director/Rosenberg granddaughter Jenn Meeropol] said that the revelation has significance beyond her immediate family, and clearing Ethel Rosenberg’s name could provide a 'deterrent to further miscarriages of justice.'
'The fact that the only recourse we have here is a petition campaign and the request for a proclamation and exoneration is because the death penalty is final,' she said."
An AP News article reports on a recent major update in the Rosenberg Case (the release of a recently declassified NSA memo that provides powerful evidence that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy).
Rosenberg son and RFC Founder Robert Meeropol is quoted, "we have a situation in which a mother of two young children was executed as a master atomic spy when she wasn’t a spy at all.”
Today's Rosenberg Mention of the Day comes from Verdict via a fascinating essay examining the parallels between Judge Irving Kaufman's handling of the 1951 Rosenberg trial and Judge Aileen Cannon's handling of the former President Trump's classified documents case in Florida. As author Rodger Citron notes, "A career-defining case presents opportunities and risks for any judge. As Kaufman learned, putting a thumb on the scales is a perilous endeavor."