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| Julius and Ethel Rosenberg |
If Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were alive today, what would they tell Edward Snowden, the former contract employee for the NSA (National Security Agency) who recently leaked details of the U.S. government's alleged vast espionage program against its own citizens?
Certainly, if they were alive today, they'd be very old. However, they've been dead for 60 years. But if they could, they'd probably tell Snowden to run as far away from the U.S. as he can.
Who were the Rosenbergs? They were an extremely bright, ambitious and idealistic young couple who were very committed to their political beliefs. What were they committed to? They were committed to Marxism, so much so that they both joined the Young Communist League USA (YCLUSA) in the 1930s.
The U.S. government strongly believed that the Rosenbergs were such devout communists that they eventually came into contact with Soviet spies. The feds accused the Rosenbergs of committing treason by providing the spies with top secret military information they had stolen. The feds suspected that the Soviets used that information to build their first nuclear bomb.
Julius was an electrical engineer by trade and he worked for the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey as an engineer inspector until he was fired after the Army discovered his affiliation with communists. At Fort Monmouth, the Army conducted research on electronics, communications, radar and guided missile controls.
While Ethel worked as a secretary for a shipping company during that time, her brother David Greenglass, also a member of YCLUSA, worked at the government's Los Alamos, New Mexico laboratory where the military was designing its first nuclear bomb under the top secret Manhattan Project.
The government believed that the Rosenbergs obtained plans for the bomb through Greenglass and passed them on to Soviet spies. The Rosenbergs were eventually arrested, indicted and convicted of committing treason against the United States. They were sentenced to death and subsequently executed on June 19, 1953.
Before Judge Irving Kaufman ordered capital punishment for the Rosenbergs, he blasted them for betraying their nation: “I consider your crime worse than murder. Plain deliberate contemplated murder is dwarfed in magnitude by comparison with the crime you have committed. In committing the act of murder, the criminal kills only his victim. The immediate family is brought to grief and when justice is meted out the chapter is closed. But in your case, I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country.”
Certainly, the Rosenbergs had their supporters. They saw the Rosenbergs as heroes who merely fought against an imperialistic government that favored the rich while crushing the poor. And many of them to this day, including their two sons Michael and Robert Meeropol, remain convinced that the government fabricated and embellished evidence to frame Julius and Ethel.
They believe that the U.S. government sacrificed the Rosenbergs to send a message to spies and wannabes that if they got caught they would end up like them. And certainly, their supporters present a compelling argument.
Their sons do admit that Julius and Ethel collaborated with Soviet spies, but claim they never passed on anything of substantive value other than rudimentary sketches of the bomb. They don't believe their parents should've received the death penalty. They're convinced that the government murdered their parents.
Since I don't know all the facts concerning the case, I won't take sides. Certainly, when two young boys lose their parents, it has a profound emotional affect on them. Undoubtedly, they still carry emotional scars from that experience.
But whether the Rosenbergs were criminals or scapegoats, they never should've consorted with communists. They were young, foolish idealists who willfully believed that communism offered them a utopian paradise on earth where everyone coexisted peacefully, shared equally and lived happily ever-after.
And to help achieve that paradise, the Rosenbergs believed that they had to ruin their own nation by betraying it into the hands of those who slaughtered, pillaged, stole, persecuted and destroyed millions of innocent lives. They embraced a satanic political system that littered Eastern Europe with millions of corpses.
In the end, they became two more victims of a monstrous lie that continues to live on despite its moral, spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy.
Too bad. The Rosenbergs were neither heroes nor villains. Rather, they were fools who ignored the truth and embraced a lie that ultimately destroyed them. In Proverbs 14:12, we read: "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."
Their sons do admit that Julius and Ethel collaborated with Soviet spies, but claim they never passed on anything of substantive value other than rudimentary sketches of the bomb. They don't believe their parents should've received the death penalty. They're convinced that the government murdered their parents.
Since I don't know all the facts concerning the case, I won't take sides. Certainly, when two young boys lose their parents, it has a profound emotional affect on them. Undoubtedly, they still carry emotional scars from that experience.
But whether the Rosenbergs were criminals or scapegoats, they never should've consorted with communists. They were young, foolish idealists who willfully believed that communism offered them a utopian paradise on earth where everyone coexisted peacefully, shared equally and lived happily ever-after.
And to help achieve that paradise, the Rosenbergs believed that they had to ruin their own nation by betraying it into the hands of those who slaughtered, pillaged, stole, persecuted and destroyed millions of innocent lives. They embraced a satanic political system that littered Eastern Europe with millions of corpses.
In the end, they became two more victims of a monstrous lie that continues to live on despite its moral, spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy.
Too bad. The Rosenbergs were neither heroes nor villains. Rather, they were fools who ignored the truth and embraced a lie that ultimately destroyed them. In Proverbs 14:12, we read: "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."
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