![]() |
Yulius & Etel RosenbergSpies
Date of Birth: 12.05.1918
Country: ![]() |
Biography of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American communists who were accused of espionage for the Soviet Union and were executed for their actions in 1953. Their trial took place during the height of the "Cold War" when McCarthy's Senate committees were hunting for communist enemies within the United States, and the American army was fighting against communism in Korea. The political climate greatly influenced their trial, resulting in harsh sentences and the denial of appeals and pleas for clemency to President Eisenhower.

Numerous books have been written about their trial, with arguments both for and against the Rosenbergs. Recently declassified documents have revealed that Julius was indeed a spy, convincing his brother-in-law, David Greenglass, to pass on information about the atomic project to the Soviets. Ethel's guilt lay in knowing about Julius's proposal to her brother and the subsequent transmission of information, but failing to inform the authorities. The information Greenglass passed on was not highly classified, but rather confirmed that the Americans were developing a more advanced version of the atomic bomb. The design and principles of this bomb had already been shared with the Soviets by Klaus Fuchs, a scientist who opposed the monopoly on nuclear weapons.
Julius had been involved in political activities since his time at City College of New York, where he was an active member of the Communist Party. He had a close group of friends and fellow students who were also members, including engineers Joel Barr and Al Sarant. During the war, Barr and Sarant served with Julius in the Army's Signal Corps. Barr worked with radar systems and later joined a high-tech company called Sperry. Sarant was involved in shipbuilding technology.
In 1950, Greenglass was arrested by the FBI, followed by Julius and later Barr and Sarant. The FBI had obtained information about Barr from decoded KGB documents mentioning his name. Barr disappeared after leaving his Paris address, leaving behind his books, clothes, and a newly purchased motorcycle. Sarant, on the other hand, was repeatedly called in for interviews by the FBI but was not arrested due to lack of evidence. In July, Sarant traveled to New York to visit his relatives, but instead, he went to Arizona and then to Mexico with Carol Dayton, the wife of his neighbor, leaving their small children behind. Their trail went cold, just like Barr's.
Another friend of Julius's, Morton Sobell, also played a role in this story. Sobell, who worked for a technical company in New York, took leave on the day of Greenglass's arrest and traveled to Mexico with his wife and children, attempting to later go to Europe. However, the FBI was suspicious and apprehended him in Mexico as an accomplice of the Rosenbergs. Despite the lack of tangible evidence, Sobell was sentenced to 30 years in prison, serving 17 of them.
In the prison, Julius occasionally played chess with a fellow inmate named Tartakow, who reported their conversations to the FBI. According to Tartakow, Julius once said "Sarant was one of my guys." However, Tartakow's reliability as a source is questionable since he hoped for leniency in his own prison sentence.
In 1995, a novel titled "Escape to Russia" by D. Granin was published, featuring characters "Joseph Brook" and "Andrei Georgievich Kartos" whose American lives mirrored the experiences of Barr and Sarant. However, the novel included fictional espionage activities that did not align with actual events. It is important to approach the evidence surrounding this case with caution, as many post-Soviet accounts may be biased and eager to label anyone as a Soviet spy.
It is unfortunate that the young idealists, Julius and Ethel, who were dedicated to the idea of justice, naive yet resilient, faced such a fate.