An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey [Hardcover]

Robert Meeropol (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 19, 2003

Robert Meeropol was six years old in 1953 when his parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed after being convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union at the height of the McCarthy era. Just before they were put to death, the Rosenbergs wrote a letter to their two sons saying they were “secure in the knowledge that others would carry on after them.”

The Rosenbergs left their young sons a legacy that was both a burden and a gift, as well as an aching emotional void. Robert Meeropol grew up torn between the need to pursue his political values and his intense fear that personal exposure might subject him and his family to violence or even death.

An Execution in the Family details Robert Meeropol’s political odyssey from being the Rosenbergs’son to becoming a prominent political activist in his own right, and it chronicles a very personal journey of self-discovery. This is the story of how he tried to balance a strong desire to live a normal life and raise a family with a growing need to create something useful out of his childhood nightmare. It is also a poignant account of how, at age forty-three, he finally found a way to honor his parents and be true to himself.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Robert Meeropol was six years old when his parents Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage in 1953. Though this was certainly a significant event in his life, it was not the single defining moment as one might assume. It is also not the central theme of his memoir, though it does play a strong supporting role. In fact, Meeropol has only vague memories of his parents. What he does remember are years spent in orphanages and foster homes before he and his brother were adopted by Abel and Anne Meeropol. While the event did cause some childhood trauma, he reflects that "I can't help feeling that I gained as much as I lost during those years." An Execution in the Family is hardly the work of a bitter man fuming at the establishment for the loss of his parents. Rather, it is the story of a thoughtful person and his struggle to find his purpose in the world. Reared on left-wing politics and social activism, he knew he wanted to help others, but he was unsure of the route to take, and his writes of his confusion and troubles with engaging frankness.

Part of his restlessness stemmed from his inability to come to terms with his past. Up into his early twenties, he never revealed who his biological parents were, even to his closest friends. Ultimately, however, events forced him to acknowledge his lineage and confront the facts, plunging him into his own in-depth investigation of the Rosenbergs' case. Eventually he was able to prove publicly that his parents' trial had been unfair and that critical testimony against them had been tainted. He also had to acknowledge that his parents' names would never be completely cleared. The process proved rewarding in many ways, notably because it served to reveal a greater purpose for him: In 1990 Meeropol started the Rosenberg Fund for Children to support children of political prisoners, beginning his life as an activist and offering him an opportunity to honor both his biological and adoptive parents in the process. "My parents’ resistance inspired a movement. That inspiration survived their execution," he writes. With this memoir, Meeropol hopes in turn to inspire others. --Shawn Carkonen

From Publishers Weekly

Bravery is rare. Tyranny is commonplace. Both define the life of Robert Meeropol, son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In his heart-wrenching, honest memoir, Meeropol recounts the emotional terrors of his childhood, the kindness of Abel and Anne Meeropol-who adopted him and his older brother after their parents' execution-his struggle to vindicate his parents, and his own political activism, culminating in the creation of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which he now directs. His story, which is a story of postwar America, is compelling. He chronicles with vision and clarity his personal and political journeys and the lengthy battle to uncover the truth about his parents' case. "For as long as I could remember we'd suffered whatever was said about our parents in silence. We had never had the opportunity or the emotional freedom to give voice to our opinions about our parents' trial and execution." When Meeropol and his brother did, in the 1970s, the floodgates opened-and over the years, the case's full horror was exposed. The Rosenbergs were charged with "conspiracy to commit espionage," not with selling atomic secrets. According to Meeropol, the person who confessed to that crime, Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, was pressured to reveal co-conspirators in exchange for his wife's freedom. And he succumbed-mouthing the words an FBI agent later testified he supplied. New documents reveal the Rosenbergs were executed for a crime the government knew they did not commit. Their sons have battled valiantly to clear their names and to lead productive lives, and Meeropol's captivating memoir deserves a spot on American history bookshelves.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (June 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312306369
• ISBN-13: 978-0312306366
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,294,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and Deeply Moving, October 11, 2003

By 

Tom Moran (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey (Hardcover)

Robert Meeropol's memoir of life as one of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's two sons, with its sardonic title echoing James Agee's novel "A Death in the Family" (although strictly speaking it's incomplete, since Meeropol had *two* executions in his family), is a powerful and moving account of growing up under the shadow of the legalized murder of both his parents by the United States government.

Having a parent in prison is not easy for a child. Having a parent executed is even worse. But having had *both* your parents executed for crimes they almost certainly did not commit, and having them become for a time the most vilified couple in America is a huge psychic burden, one which Meeropol repressed for a long time. In many ways, as he points out, he was fortunate -- he was adopted by a loving couple who raised both him and his older brother well. He received a good education, married and began a career and a family. But underneath it all was a secret he told to almost no one until he was in late twenties: that his parents had been sent to the electric chair for conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union.

Not all of Meeropol's book is about the Rosenberg Case. He has had an interesting life on his own merits, and much of it makes for engrossing reading. If I have any reservations at all about the book it's because, maybe due to his being dyslexic, possibly because he's worked with children for many years, Meeropol's prose style is a little simplistic. To put it mildly. He uses commas so sparingly that I began to suspect he'd read way too much Hemingway. An average paragraph will read: CLAUSE COMMA CLAUSE FULLSTOP CLAUSE COMMA CLAUSE FULL STOP CLAUSE COMMA CLAUSE FULL STOP. I'm not saying that he should have necessarily imitated the later Henry James, but the unintentionally faux-Hemingway prose style does get a little monotonous at times.

The most gripping part of the book for me was Meeropol's growing realization that, while his parents were almost certainly not guilty of the charges for which they were executed, he was forced "to accept the possibility that my father had participated in an illegal and covert effort to help the Soviet Union defeat the Nazis" by supplying them with technical military information not related to the atomic bomb. Reading his son's account of how he came to grips with the fact that Julius Rosenberg allowed his devotion to the Communist ideology to enable him to give military secrets to the Russians (who, it should be pointed out, were our allies at the time) in spite of the disaster that it brought to his family, you are impressed with Robert Meeropol's desire to find out the truth about his parents, no matter what it might be.

Meeropol makes a strong case that, not only was his father not guilty of providing the Russians with the secret of the atomic bomb, he was executed along with his wife as the result of a criminal conspiracy between the attorney general of the United States and a Supreme Court Justice, who worked together to obstruct justice with the intent of placing them in the electric chair. Further, it is quite possible that Ethel Rosenberg may have been completely innocent of any wrongdoing at all. Meeropol's parents, he writes, "were killed not for any crime they may have committed, but because they were Communists who would not cooperate with the FBI."

I can't recommend this book too highly. It depicts one of the most important and tragic stories in American history as seen through the eyes of one of its victims who refused to be victimized. Today Meeropol is a staunch opponent of the death penalty and runs the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a charity that aids the children of political prisoners -- a very appropriate way of honoring his parents' memory. You owe it to yourself to read this book. You may not agree with everything he says, but what he has to say should be heard.

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Son's Journey, July 9, 2003

By 

Edith Nash (Wisconsin Rapids, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful, inspiring, truth-telling account of the Rosenbergs' younger son's life and growth into a most impressive survivor of the loss of both parents, neglect, and serious mistreatment by the government that executed his parents. Meeropol's view of their innocence is so balanced, so comprehensive, so sane. His commitment to continue their work and ethic is very convincing. The writing is superb--unvarnished and in his own voice, whether as a 5 year-old child or a 56 year-old fully developed social activist.

5.0 out of 5 stars Cold War, January 17, 2012

By 

Attitude Era Fan - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey (Paperback)

The book arrived within the listed estimated delivery range and in the condition listed. The book is for an upcoming class on Cold War at my college. I was pleased to find this book on the cheap here versus buying it at full price at my campus bookstore. It looks like a good read and I'm looking forward to reading it for the class.