Ethel Rosenberg, accused and executed for being a Soviet spy in “the crime of the century,” may have been innocent, a 1950 grand jury's testimony released Wednesday seems to suggest.
The testimony is from David Greenglass, Rosenberg’s brother, who helped to ensure she and her husband Julius Rosenberg
ended up in the electric chair, according to Newser. The account was ordered to be released following his death last year.
In the testimony, Greenglass admits to sharing information with Julius Rosenberg and his wife, Ruth Greenglass, but not his sister.
Greenglass explained how Julius Rosenberg had received a silver Omega watch from Russian agents, but when it comes to his sister, he said, “My sister has never spoken to me about this subject.”
Nonetheless, the testimony does place Ethel Rosenberg present at several key meetings, claiming that she heard details about her
husband’s spying operating, Politico reported.
The Rosenbergs had two sons, Robert and Michael Meeropol. Robert Meeropol is now calling for his mother’s name to be cleared.
“David Greenglass lied when he said Ethel did it. It’s kind of like a giant jigsaw puzzle we put together, and an important piece
fell into place today,” Meeropol told The Recorder. “It takes the heart out of the government’s case.”
The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 after Greenglass said he saw transcriptions of information he gave to Julius Rosenberg on a typewriter in 1945, which this new testimony now seems to contradict. Greenglass was serving as an Army machinist at the headquarters for the Manhattan Project.
Greenglass, who served nearly 10 years of his own time as a co-conspirator, admitted he lied about the observance.
“There was never really any solid evidence that she had been involved in any part of espionage,” an author on the subject told Newser. “It just confirms this idea that the government was using her, imprisoning her to get at Julius Rosenberg.”
Speculation swirls that it was actually Ruth Greenglass who typed Julius Rosenberg’s notes for the Soviet Union, and her husband lied to protect her.
“I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I don’t remember,” Greenglass told Sam Roberts from The New York Times for the book “The Brother: The Untold Story for the Rosenberg Case” in 2001, according to Politico. “My wife is more important to me than my sister.”