WASHINGTON, D.C. — On June 14, 1953, Robert and Michael Meeropol, 6 and 10 at the time, delivered a letter to a guard at the White House gates asking then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower to spare their parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted for conspiracy to commit espionage and awaiting execution.
“Please let my mommy and daddy go and not let anything happen to them,” Michael wrote to Eisenhower. “If they come home Robby and I will be very happy, we will thank you very much.”
Michael said he remembers the day clearly, the guard knew he was coming and smiled when Michael handed him the letter. His grandparents and brother Robert stood by his side.
That day, approximately 6,800 people marched through Washington to pressure the president into granting clemency for the convicted spies, according the FBI website.
Signs read “Show the world America is merciful,” “New evidence shows perjury,” and “Mr. President: ‘Please send my mommy and daddy home’ Michael Rosenberg.”
The pleas did not save their parents. The Rosenbergs were electrocuted five days later.
The Rosenbergs were convicted of passing secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. However, the Meeropol brothers say their mother was not a spy. The charges against Ethel and the threat of the death penalty, according to Robert, were meant to intimidate Julius into cooperating.
After their parents’ death, Robert and Michael took the adoptive parents’ surname of Meeropol. Robert, 69, now lives in Easthampton and Michael, 73, lives in New York.
On Thursday, the Meeropol brothers visited the White House gates again, this time to publicly and symbolically deliver a letter and package of supporting documents to President Barack Obama, calling on him to issue a proclamation exonerating their mother.
“What we’re asking for is a presidential statement that in effect nullifies the guilty verdict and states that her execution was wrong,” Robert said during a live Facebook feed from outside the White House.
Together, the brothers re-enacted the visit they made 63 years ago. But this time, the gates around the White House were more secure and the brothers were told they could not hand deliver a letter. The Meeropols said the packet has been sent through mail as well.
“The important thing is we symbolically did this to replicate what was done in 1953,” Michael said.
The Meeropol brothers spent about 40 years researching their parents’ case. In 2008, grand jury documents from the Rosenberg trial were released – excluding the testimony of a chief prosecution witness, Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass.
Greenglass’s testimony was made public in 2015, about a year after his death. It was key evidence. At the trial, Greenglass contradicted his sworn grand jury testimony. At the trial, he described Ethel at secret meetings and that he saw his sister typing up handwritten notes. Greenglass’s grand jury testimony, however, makes no mention of Ethel’s presence at secret meetings, according to the Meeropols.
Decades later, Greenglass admitted that his testimony that led to his sister’s conviction and execution was a lie, according to the Meeropols.
“The evidence about our mother is so clear that there is virtually no argument about it,” Michael said.
But the Meeropol’s said, “There is no question that the U.S. government – fueled by the hysteria of McCarthyism – encouraged false testimony and wrongly killed our parents.”
On Wednesday, Congressman Jim McGovern sent a letter urging Obama to re-examine the case and determine if the conviction and execution of Ethel was fundamentally flawed.
“A significant body of evidence – including U.S. government files, grand jury testimony and other third-party sources – now suggests that Ethel was not a spy, and that the government knew this at the time of her prosecution,” McGovern wrote. “Moreover, this evidence indicates that Ethel was prosecuted not because of her own culpability but as a ‘lever’ to put pressure on her husband, Julius, to cooperate with the government.”
Within the past year, more than 40,000 people signed the petition to exonerate Ethel Rosenberg. Among the notable political activists who have signed the petition are Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Angela Davis and Ed Asner.
Michael Moore posted a letter to Obama on his Facebook page. “Mr. President, it is now time to right this wrong. It is time to exonerate Ethel Rosenberg,” he wrote.
A petition through the White House government website requires 100,000 signatures to be collected within 30 days for a response. Considering the Rosenberg case was over six decades ago, the Meeropol brothers decided to take a different route and launched a petition on the Rosenberg Fund for Children website, an Easthampton organization founded by Robert in 1990 to help children of targeted activists.
Throughout the month of December, the Meeropol brothers plan to continue to raise questions about their mother’s case and gather more signatures.
“Since we can’t being her back to life, there could be nothing more satisfying for us than to have the government acknowledge that this shouldn’t have happened,” Robert said in front of the White House during the live Facebook feed.
Caitlin Ashworth can be reached at cashworth@gazettenet.com.