By CAITLIN ASHWORTH
Staff Writer
EASTHAMPTON — Michael Meeropol was just 10 years old when his mother and father, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage. His brother, Robert, was 6.
It was 1953, during the McCarthy era of widespread anti-communist panic. The Rosenbergs were convicted of passing secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, and were sentenced to die in the electric chair. It was one of the most notable cases of that time.
However, Robert Meeropol said there is evidence that proves his mother’s trial was perjured and wrongful. The charges against Ethel Rosenberg and the threat of the death penalty, according to Meeropol, was meant to intimidate Julius Rosenberg into cooperating. Meeropol said his mother was executed for being a “master atomic spy.”
“She wasn’t a spy,” he said last week.
Sixty-three years after the execution, the Meeropol brothers are calling on the Obama administration to issue a proclamation exonerating Ethel Rosenberg before the president leaves office. Read more at the link above.