Wednesday, September 28

Happy Birthday


Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg

Born: September 28, 1915, New York City, New York
Died: June 19, 1953, Sing Sing Correctional Facility, New York

Survivors: sons Robert and Michael, who were adopted by songwriter Abel Meeropol (Lewis Allan), the composer of "Strange Fruit", and his wife, because the Rosenberg's relatives were too fearful to take the boys in.

Obligatory Simpsons: (Paul Harvey voice on radio) "And that little boy, whom nobody liked, grew up to be...Roy Cohn."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

doghouse, that takes guts to post that.

btw, why did you do it?

James Briggs Stratton "Doghouse" Riley said...

Well, as a parable for our times, I suppose.

Leaving aside the central question of whether the government hid the fact it actually knew that Ethel Rosenberg was innocent or whether they just hid the fact it knew she had at most done nothing which approached a real charge of espionage, the Rosenbergs were charged with treason, despite the fact that we never were at war with the Soviet Union and at the time "they" were passing "secrets" we were in fact allies. That's the same sort of "fuck the details, fuck legality, fuck declarations, we're at war!" mentality the intellectual grandchildren of Roy Cohn uphold today.

Anonymous said...

thanx for the explanation, doghouse. i said it took guts because she was if not a red, then a very dark pink.

yeah yeah yeah -- please don't call me a red-baiter. i know that stalin was a communist; i know that fdr wasn't.

the pic reminds me of the old, bad times when monsters like mccarthy and nixon roamed the earth, and that to a lotta folks, saying jewish bolshevik was like saying striped zebra -- redundant.

Alex said...

America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.

-Ginsberg, "America"

eRobin said...

That's the same sort of "fuck the details, fuck legality, fuck declarations, we're at war!" mentality the intellectual grandchildren of Roy Cohn uphold today.

Amen.