随便
加入时间: 2004/02/14
文章: 24019
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作者：随便 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
Ethel Greenglass was born in New York on 28th September, 1915. He attended the Seward High School and after taking a short secretarial course, she held a variety of clerical jobs and became an active trade unionist.
In 1939 Ethel married Julius Rosenberg. During the Second World War Julius was employed as a civilian inspector for the Army Signal Corps, but was dismissed in 1945 as a result of allegations that he was a member of the Communist Party. Rosenberg now opened a small machine shop in Manhattan with Ethel's brother, David Greenglass. However, the business did badly and Greenglass left the partnership.
In 1950 Klaus Fuchs, head of the physics department of the British nuclear research centre at Harwell, was arrested and charged with espionage. Fuchs confessed that he had been passing information to the Soviet Union since working on the Manhattan Project during the Second World War.
The FBI were desperate to discover the names of the spies who had worked with Klaus Fuchs while he had been in America. Elizabeth Bentley, a former member of the American Communist Party, had in 1945 given FBI agents eighty names of people she believed were involved in espionage. At the time it had been impossible to acquire enough information to bring the suspects to court. These people were interviewed again and one of them, Harry Gold, confessed that he had acted as Fuchs's courier. He also named David Greenglass as being a member of the spy ring.
Greenglass was now interviewed and after confessing, claimed that Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were also members of the spy ring. In July 1950 Ethel and her husband were arrested by the FBI and accused of spying for the Soviet Union. The couple were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. The main evidence against them was supplied by David Greenglass. He claimed that Rosenberg had given atom bomb secrets that he in turn passed to Harry Gold, a convicted Soviet spy. The defense attorney, Emmanuel Bloch, argued that Greenglass was lying in order to gain revenge because he blamed Rosenberg for their failed business venture.
The jury believed the evidence of Greenglass and both Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were found guilty and sentenced to death. A large number of people were shocked by the severity of the sentence as they had not been found guilty of treason. In fact, they had been tried under the terms of the Espionage Act that had been passed in 1917 to deal with the American anti-war movement.
Afterwards it became clear that the government did not believe the Rosenbergs would be executed. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, had warned that history would not be kind to a government responsible for orphaning the couple's two young sons on such poor evidence. Rumours began to circulate that the government would be willing to spare the couple's life if they confessed and gave evidence about other Communist Party spies.
The case created a great deal of controversy in Europe where it was argued that the Rosenbergs were victims of anti-semitism and McCarthyism. Nobel prize-winner, Jean-Paul Sartre, called the case "a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation".
Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg remained on death row for twenty-six months. They both refused to confess and provide evidence against others and they were eventually executed on 19th June, 1953. As one political commentator pointed out, they died because they refused to confess and name others.
作者：随便 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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被认为是麦卡锡主义的牺牲品的罗森堡夫妇 [ZT]
