Ethel Rosenberg: 1915–1953
Julius Rosenberg: 1918–1953

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for their supposed roles in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. The fact that they were convicted on circumstantial evidence, and the resulting severity of their sentences, emphasizes the seriousness of the two greatest fears of the 1950s: communism and the atomic bomb.

A communist couple

Julius Rosenberg grew up in a poor and strictly religious Jewish family in New York. Although he had been trained to become a rabbi, he became involved in radical politics by the time he was a teenager. In 1936, he met his future wife, Ethel Greenglass, at a New Year’s Eve benefit for the International Seamen’s Union. Greenglass was a politically active New York native who helped organize labor groups. Born on New York’s...