The Rosenberg case

Pre-reading questions

· What is your attitude to spies and espionage? Do you think espionage is necessary, and in what respect?

· Do you know the names of any spies?

· Does the name ‘the Rosenbergs’ say anything to you?

Read the following two articles (2 and 3), single out unknown words, try to guess their meaning from the context, then check yourself using your dictionary. After reading, make a group discussion on the topic “ESPIONAGE” (make sure you know how to pronounce this essential word!).

The Rosenbergs were executed in January 1953, the first, indeed the only, Americans ever to be put to death for espionage in peace time. They were accused of passing atomic secrets to the Russians. Julius Rosenberg was a 35-year-old engineer, living in New York with his wife Ethel and their two sons, Michael born in 1943 and Robert in 1947. The Rosenbergs denied the charges and said they had been framed. Their accuser was Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, an army machinist at Los Alamos and, secretly, a courier for Klaus Fuchs, the British physicist who worked on the atom bomb and was a confessed Soviet spy.

In the Cold War climate of the Fifties, when America had lost its atomic bomb monopoly and Senator McCarthy was in the ascendancy, the Rosenbergs were sitting ducks. Despite doubts about Ethel's involvement and questionable tactics by the FBI, the prosecution called for the death penalty for the Rosenbergs. World-wide attention focused on the case because of the inequity of the punishment to the crime. In Britain, Fuchs and other spies had been given moderate prison sentences. But conservative America panicked and even an appeal for clemency from the Pope was ignored.

Now, 30 years later, Americans are re-examining the Rosenberg case, and there is still no consensus. In the movie, 'Daniel,' based on E. L. Doctorow's novel, ' The Book of Daniel,' director Sidney Lumet examines the emotional impact of the case on the Rosenberg children. In this fictionalised account, we see Daniel, the older son, as a young man trying to come to terms with events, which are shown in a series of flashbacks. Daniel's feelings are frozen when his parents are executed. It is only after his younger sister commits suicide that he allows his emotions to thaw and he becomes involved with the Peace movement of the Sixties.

'It's a film about passion, and who pays for passion, and what it costs within a political context,' says Lumet. ' It is not a film about the Rosenbergs, though it was inspired by the Rosenberg case. It is not about guilt or innocence. I know very little about the Rosenbergs. The film is meant to put you through an experience honestly. Timothy Hutton, who plays Daniel in the film, also emphasises the emotional content. 'How do you grow up, how do you survive, when your parents are convicted spies?'

'We made no attempt to be historically accurate,' says Lumet, but this case is apparently still so sensitive that it arouses political passions on both sides.' Conservative America has found Lumet too easy on the Rosenbergs; the Old Left thinks he hasn't gone far enough in proving their innocence; the real Rosenberg sons are displeased with the poetic licence the film-makers have taken with events.

The controversy has been further fuelled by the appearance of the book 'The Rosenberg File' by Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton (published in Britain by Weidenfeld and Nicolson), which takes a new look at the Rosenberg trial, using information that had come to light through the US Freedom of Information Act. (The Rosenberg sons, Robert and Michael Meeropol - they have taken the name of their adoptive parents - successfully sued for the release of the papers, hoping they would prove that their parents were the victims of a government conspiracy and not guilty of espionage.)

Ronald Radosh, a history professor at Queensborough College, says he began his research in 1978, believing `the Rosenbergs were completely innocent.' A left­wing activist and a member of `The Committee to Re-open the Rosenberg Case', he was convinced after reading the papers that 'Julius was most certainly guilty, Ethel to a much lesser extent, but the death penalty was disproportionate with the crime.'

The Meeropols, understandably, took great exception to the book. In a long refutation by them, which has appeared in Socialist Review, they claim that Radosh 'hates the Communist Party and that's the way he enters the case'. To which Radosh replies rather benignly: 'If Michael and Robbie would stick to the injustice of the death sentence, how uncalled for it was, and how America couldn't grant leniency at the time, rather than press the Rosenbergs innocence, then they would have a much stronger case. I understand how they feel. They are the tragic victims of the case, but you can't alter history to suit them.'

On the other hand, there's nothing benign about Radosh's view of the movie. He feels that both Doctorow (who wrote the screenplay) and Lumet have been `disingenuous, because the film really is about the Rosenberg case. To get the film to work, it must have the audiences' sympathy; they must assume that the Isaacsons [the name used in the movie] are innocent. That is why the film never goes into the character of David Greenglass, who after all worked at Los Alamos. The accuser in the film makes the accusation seem silly, without foundation. There is a lot of this sort of thing in the film.'

`Ironically', says Frank Lombardi, a columnist for the New York Daily News, `the electric chair did for the Rosenbergs exactly the opposite of what their executioners had intended. Instead of killing them, the chair at Sing Sing made the couple bigger than life.'

Article 3

Pre-reading notes:

1. MI6 is the section of the British secret service which operates mainly abroad. Its name comes from ‘Military Intelligence, Section 6’. MI6’s job is to send spies to foreign countries in order to collect secret military and political information. Although everyone knows that MI6 has existed for many years, the government never officially admitted this until 1992.

2. Find in the article three ‘polite’ synonyms to the word insane.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-24