Customer Reviews

An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey

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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.

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.

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.

There is no doubt that Meeropol went through the most wrenching of traumas, and yet he grew up to be a caring, loving, thoughtful and good person. This book is a piece of history, and a testimony to how the caring and attention of some wonderful people allowed the children of Ethel & Julius Rosenberg build on the foundation laid for them as very young children. This was a heartbreak of a case--and a thoughtful fair presentation by Robert Meeropol.

An important latest chapter in the saga of the "Rosenberg Spy Case" by the older son of Julius and Ethel. Like "Watergate" the controversy will never end.

I never knew that the Rosenberg children were basically forced to assume a different last name so they wouldn't be persecuted by children and adults throughout their lives. Instead of understandably seeking revenge against those that did wrong by his parents (and our democracy), Robert Meeropol has adopted a philosophy of the highest order, to create something constructive out of something terribly heinous. His argument against the death penalty in Chapter 9 is so eloquently convincing that it should be read by every citizen of the free world. I don't believe this to be an understatement. If you read this review, don't just sit there... get the book and read that chapter!!

The author also describes his support of Mumia Abu Jamal and how the Fraternal Order of Police stance for execution is more vengeance than truth-oriented. It's a controversial stance, and he doesn't belabor the point.

On top of it all, he even suggests that he isn't quite convinced that his father wasn't guilty of something, just that there was no evidence to support the government's case against him, and even moreso with his mother. It seems that had the Rosenbergs admitted some guilt, their lives would be spared, Because they refused to lie, they chose death instead. Turns out they were brave, and their executioners cowards. Not a great moment for the USA.

Written simply and with a voice free of self righteousness, Meeropol suggests the proper way our species should think, without moral relativism, and without the hysterics of today's political talking heads. This book makes places like Fox News obsolete.

Robert Meeropol manages to write a book about what must be an intensely painful subject for him -- his parents' execution -- with few traces of bitterness or rancor. He also deals honestly with the anger he does have, most of which is reserved for his uncle, David Greenglass. His approach to the question of their guilt or innocence is remarkably evenhanded, which makes the book all the more credible. Although he and his brother have lived their lives in the shadow of their parents' executions, both seem to have carved out productive, happy lives for themselves, which gives a glimmer of hope to this tragic story, well told.

I read this book because I have known of Robert and his brother Michael since the 1970s and I have always admired his parents and what they did. However, the book had an interest in its own, not just as the saga of a child of Ethel and Julius, but a saga of people of our generation (Robby is 15 days older than I am) especially as a number of the names of his peers and associates are faces and names I knew or still know.

Many people live with a secret, that dad or mom is an alcoholic or a drug addict, that physical or even sexual abuse is going on in the house, that the bills are not being paid, that they are adopted, but Robby grew up with the secret of his identity. It was not all the hatred the witch hunt set up for his parents, but also the helpless feeling he recounts he felt when strangers who "knew who he was" would acost him on the streets with hugs and kisses and dotting.

I think a lot more people will identify with this portion of his life, and how this difficulty gave him emotional problems and was even a block to his first attempts at a relationship with the woman who became his life.

The book also gives a picture of the life and struggle of college student radicals at one of the centers of the radicalization at Ann Arbor, but also about Robby's continued commitment which reached a point of emotional and physical crisis when he became a corporate lawyer. He jsut could not do that, he needed to confront "them," the system that had murdered his parents and set up the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a foundation that provides support and life enrichment for children of political prisoners and other victims of the repressive arms of American capitalism.

The point of interest for me is how he deals with recent allegations from the "Verona" files released by the government and various claims made by a former KGB agent that Julius Rosenberg had given technical information about aeronautic and electronic devices to the USSR, though not the "secrets of the
A-Bomb." To me his father was a heroic figure, whose work helped strengthen the USSR which, with all the criminal deficiencies of its stalinized leadership, was the only thing that stopped the USA from launching the nuclear war it planned it the late 1940s.

Even if one takes this evidence with full coin, the evidence is that Ethel never did anything. While she was dedicated to the cause, at the time she was in poor health, dealing with her infant Micahel who was a difficult child, and such a devoted mother that she took university courses in child pyschology and other issues to learn to give her son the best care.

This information shows that Julius Rosenberg had nothing to do with the atomic bomb (both the Verona tapes and the KGB officer indicate the one time the bomb was discussed with David Greenglass, his brother-in-law, Julius was waiting outside the car because he knew nothing about this.)

Moreover, Greenglass's information that was touted as "the secret of the atomic bomb" was useless. He was a machinist who made parts, and had no knowledge of the actual workings of the bomb.

The Rosenbergs were framed because they refused to knucle under to the lies and the hysteria that the US government was orchestrating under Truman and then under Eisenhower. The real system of it was to get people to break under the pressure and fear, to lie about what they did, to implicate others, and to spread the hysteria.

It had nothing to do with gathering information, for the FBI had extensive real knowledge of what was going on that would have refuted some of the lies and slanders that emerged under the witch hunt, a good example of this being the Hollywood Ten prosecution that was supposed to be about finding out who was in the Community party in the Hollywood film industry. Of course at the time, the person who maintained CP membership records for Southern California was an FBI agent and no such inquiry was needed. It had to do with breaking people down.

Julius and Ethel held strong because as their letters to the world and their children and their last words said, they believed in fighting for a better future than the world they lived in.

Their son follows this fight.

One thing I felt deficient in this book, and perhaps this is just my own personal interst as I met both men in the 1970s, is that in the last section of the book what became of his brother Michael disappears from the narrative.

This book is an inspiring read that speaks to all of us. Not only has he given us a mvoing personal account of his own life, but Robert Meeropol challenges us all, as he challenges himself, to lead a life of purpose and humanity.

As a child of his generation, I could not help but see bits of myself and the inner conflicts of my life throughout the book. I laughed and read passages aloud to my spouse, but also shed more than a few tears. But in the end, this is a story of triumph and struggle. Not to be missed.

Alas! I see the hostile reviews to this book, and I think, "Who are you to tell this man what he should believe and what his life should be?" I find this to be a great American story of growth and acceptance. It's honest, and Meeropol has earned the right to choose his life and his values of decency and holding authority accountable. If you want to reinforce your own conservative agenda, find something else to read. There's plenty out there. If, however, you're interested in a real look at the cold war and Viet Nam era as they were felt by real people of conscience in America, enjoy this read.