By Robert Meeropol, RFC Founder

In September 2021 we lost a major figure in the Rosenberg Case struggle when David Alman died at the age of 102. In 1951, he and his wife, Emily Alman, were co-founders of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case. Dave wrote decades later that the few who formed the original core of the Committee weren’t the best people to do it, but there was no one else.

Emily died in 2004, at age 86, after a successful career as a sociologist and lawyer. Dave was a novelist, businessman, farmer and social activist. In 2010 Dave finished the book the two of them had been working on entitled, "Exoneration: The Rosenberg-Sobell Case in the 21st Century." It is the inside story of those on the front lines battling to save my parents’ lives at the height of the McCarthy era hysteria.

Dave never gave up fighting for the truth about my parents’ case. He was there in the 1950’s, and twenty years later when we founded the National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case. This century, we worked together on the effort that led to the Exonerate Ethel Campaign in 2016. David was boundlessly optimistic. He told me at age 100, in the midst of the Trump darkness, that he still expected to see my mother exonerated. I regret that he didn’t live to get his wish, but his death has fortified my desire to re-initiate that effort.

Read more of Robert’s reflections on Dave Alman here on our blog.

Photo from The David and Emily Alman Collection of The Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Archive at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center