DEVOTION

Ethel Rosenberg’s Sons Ask Obama to Exonerate Her

More than 60 years after her execution for spying.

More than 60 years after convicted spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by electric chair, the couple’s two children have appealed to President Barack Obama to exonerate their mother. “We are giving the United States government the chance to acknowledge the injustice done to our mother,” Robert Meeropol told reporters Thursday, adding that the appeal was a “test” to see if the government has the courage to “acknowledge the terrible wrong it did to her and to us.” The Rosenbergs’ sons, Robert and Michael, were 6- and 10-years-old when their mother was executed. They had appealed to Dwight D. Eisenhower to pardon their parents, but with no luck. Now, they say they have evidence to prove Ethel Rosenberg was never a spy. “Our claim is that the trial of Ethel Rosenberg was a perversion of justice,” Robert Meeropol said in comments carried by The Washington Post. “The FBI files show that my mother was only arrested to use as a lever against her husband,” he said. Michael, the older brother, said the two had spent 40 years researching the case. “This time we are not merely advocates for our family, but for our country. It is never too late to learn from the mistakes of the past,” he said. The Rosenbergs were arrested in 1950 and charged with conspiring to provide technical information to the Soviet Union on how to build an atomic bomb. Their two sons have spent their lives fighting to clear the Rosenberg name, conceding that their father was a spy but calling accusations against their mother “absolutely absurd.”