Rosenberg, Ethel and Julius

Rosenberg, Ethel and Julius

 orig. Ethel Greenglass

(born Sept. 28, 1915, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died June 19, 1953, Ossining, N.Y.) (born May 12, 1918, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died June 19, 1953, Ossining, N.Y.) U.S. spies. They were married in 1939, by which time they were already active in the Communist Party. In 1940 Julius became an engineer with the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He and his wife, Ethel, apparently gave military secrets to the Soviet military in a conspiracy with Ethel's brother, Sgt. David Greenglass, a machinist on the atomic-bomb project at Los Alamos, N.M., and Harry Gold, a courier for the U.S. espionage ring. They were all arrested in mid-1950. Greenglass and Gold received prison terms, but the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. Despite several appeals and a worldwide campaign for mercy, they were executed at Sing Sing Prison in 1953, the only U.S. civilians ever executed for espionage. Despite considerable controversy in subsequent years, the question of their guilt was largely resolved in the early 1990s, when the release of Soviet intelligence information confirmed the Rosenbergs' involvement in espionage.