Generation on Trial?

By R.Z. Sheppard

WE ARE YOUR SONS: THE LEGACY OF ETHEL AND JULIUS ROSENBERG by ROBERT and MICHAEL MEEROPOL 419 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $10.

Shortly before 9 p.m. on June 19, 1953, Columnist Bob Considine stepped in front of newsreel cameras set up outside the walls of Sing Sing Prison to give his eyewitness account of the executions of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The old pro obliged his audience with a few grisly details and a note of piety. "Ethel Rosenberg," he said, "met her maker and will have a lot of explaining to do."

Eyewitness Considine did not reveal the source of this final bit of information; he had little need to. For most Americans in the 1950s, leaving the convicted atom spies to heaven was the proper way to end one of the most emotionally charged cases ever tried under American law.

Shocking Facts. The Rosenbergs' two children, Michael, 10, and Robert, 6, were left to history. Now, under the name of the couple who adopted them (Anne and Abel Meeropol), Robert, 28, and Michael, 32, have come forward with a Rosenberg book of their own. It is anything but a literary experience. Half of the book consists of Ethel's and Julius' death-house letters. These are interspersed with the sons' rather sketchy autobiographies, plus a long revisionist analysis of the cold war by Michael, who holds a Ph.D. in economics.

Yet We Are Your Sons is a provocative document, especially when read during the current decline of confidence in governmental ethics. The book's publication coincides with renewed activity to convince the public that the Rosenbergs were innocent victims of a frame-up. Chapters of the National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case have sprung up round the country. Invoking the Freedom of Information Act, the Meeropols themselves have formally requested a number of Government agencies to unlock the Rosenberg files. The case seems due for one of its periodic flare-ups.

It all really began in 1949, when the Soviet Union surprised U.S. experts by testing its first nuclear bomb. A natural fear that the Russians had stolen the secret was encouraged by a series of shocking facts: the 1950 arrest of English Physicist Klaus Fuchs, who confessed to supplying Russia with atomic information; the admission by Philadelphia Chemist Harry Gold that he had been Fuchs' American courier; the arrest of David Greenglass, an Army machinist at Los Alamos during World War II. Greenglass was Ethel Rosenberg's brother. He told the FBI that he had been Gold's accomplice. He added that his brother-in-law Julius Rosenberg had recruited him to steal secrets from Los Alamos.

The trial and the ensuing appeals occurred in an atmosphere of national hysteria. Abroad, U.S. troops were battling in Korea; at home, Senator Joseph McCarthy was waving lists of "Communists" he said had invaded the State Department. The Rosenberg prosecution had little trouble presenting an apparently crushing case against the couple, as well as against Co-Defendant Morton Sobell, whose own account of the trial and his nearly 18 years in prison was published in On Doing Time (1974). The Rosenbergs repeatedly took the Fifth Amendment when asked if they belonged to the Communist Party. Greenglass, the Government's star witness, testified that his brother-in-law and sister were part of a Soviet spy network here. The Rosenbergs denied any such guilt, arguing that Greenglass and Gold had perjured themselves to escape a possible death penalty.

The younger Meeropols clearly believe in that defense. They cite a number of the 25 books that have been written about the case, some raising unsettling questions about the conduct of the trial and evidence used at it. Walter and Miriam Schneir's Invitation to an Inquest, for example, alleges after lengthy examination that one of the two Albuquerque hotel registration cards used by the prosecution to link Gold to Greenglass is a forgery.

The Meeropol boys offer no new evidence that might clear their parents' name. Many of the Rosenbergs' letters have been published before. Some were circulated to generate sympathy during the long appeal process. Tune has not been kind to Ethel's and Julius' prose, either. Embarrassingly personal passages about the torments of separation from each other and from their children bleed profusely into the strident hyperbole of 1930s left-wing rhetoric. An occasional sentence survives questions of guilt, innocence and politics. On a visit to Sing Sing, the older Michael vented his ten-year-old's curiosity about death. Later, Julius wrote with simple power to Ethel: "He asked me how you die and I told him and he asked if there is an electric chair here and I said yes."

Show Trial. The sons' own recollections have a remote quality when read next to such letters. Yet in many instances, the harrowing nature of some incidents fights through. Michael remembers how, in the fall of 1953, he and his brother were turned away as nonresidents by the Toms River, N.J., school superintendent, even though they had been living there with family friends for a year. Elsewhere he recalls Grandmother Greenglass angrily yelling at her daughter, "If you don't talk, you're gonna burn with your husband."

As patchwork, We Are Your Sons is held together by the authors' faith in their parents' complete innocence. Yet between the jury's guilty verdict and the chance of a total frame-up is a possibility that the true believers--on both sides--would probably not entertain: that the Rosenbergs were guilty of low-level spying and the Government trumped up additional evidence and coached witnesses to turn a weak case into a sensational show trial. The truth may be resting uneasily in those unopened Washington files. . R.Z. Sheppard

"I have to make a real effort to call them my adoptive parents," says Robert, the younger Meeropol. "It feels like an unnatural act to me." He is talking about Songwriter Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne, who lost their own two children at birth and took the frightened Rosenberg boys to live with them six months after the execution. Anne, who died last year, and Abel, now living in Miami, were the best thing that could have happened to the orphans. Abel diverted the boys with stories, inventing characters like Rocky Head, Tomato Nose and a dog named Hungry Soup Bone. He also gave them fierce support. "When the police came at night to take us to the shelter," Michael remembers, "Abel told them to come back in the morning. When they insisted, he said, 'You'll take these kids over my dead body.' They came back in the morning."

Blown Cover. Despite the long hair and mustaches, the original family resemblance is there. At times, Michael shares Ethel's expression of willed serenity; Robert has Julius' eyes and nose. Both have had fine educations paid for out of a trust fund set up 22 years ago by Rosenberg Defense Lawyer Emanuel Bloch. Robert has a degree in anthropology from the University of Michigan. Michael studied economics at Swarthmore and read history at King's College, Cambridge, where he lived in rooms above E.M. Forster. "He once complained my parties were too loud, but when I explained it was only a record player, he sent up a note that read, 'I shall call on you soon.' "

Last year the Meeropols allowed their cover to be completely blown in an illustrated New York Times article. So far, it has not proved harmful to their tightly knit domesticity. Michael lives with his wife Ann, daughter Veronica Ethel ("Ivy"), 6, and adopted son Gregory Julian. Home is a newly acquired house outside Springfield, Mass. Robert lives with his wife Elli and daughter Jennifer Ethel, 2 1/2, in a six-room apartment near Springfield's business district.

"I don't think it is an accident that we are both married, with kids," says Robert, who wed at 20. Both brothers share the household duties. Ann Meeropol teaches English to immigrants; Elli has written a yet-to-be-published article about Ethel Rosenberg for Ms. magazine, making the ironic observation that prison liberated her from housework and allowed her to write.

The Meeropols have no plans to assume their original name. As blood Rosenbergs, they are not shy about seeking what they regard as retribution. But as Meeropols, their priorities seem in order. "When I'm not traveling to speak somewhere," says Robert, "I spend 75% of my time at home taking care of my daughter. If that means that the work we are doing for the book suffers some, then so be it. One of the reasons we are doing all this is because our parents were taken away from us. But I'll be damned if I'll neglect my child in order to try to right what was done to us."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.