`The Rosenberg File
By ALAN ABRAMS
By now, it would be as
hard not to know of- the
existence of "The Rosenberg
File — A Search for the
Truth" by Ronald Radosh
and Joyce Milton (Holt,
Rinehart and Winston), as
it would have been to live
through the trial of the
Jewish-American couple
accused of, in the words of J.
Edgar Hoover, "the crime of
the century."
Yet, one of the many
amazing facts uncovered by
the diligent authors of this
book is that one juror later
told a journalist, "I never
heard of -these people
(Julius and Ethel Rosen-
berg) before. I never even
knew they had been ar-
rested. It came as a com-
plete surprise." And he was
- not alone = at least three of
the jurors, and possibly
even more, had managed to
remain entirely oblivious to
the barrage of overly
cooperative (if not outright
hysterical) publicity pro-
vided by the nation's news-
papers to the great govern-
ment atomic-spy hunt of
1950.
This book has been re-
ceived with a similar
amount of media attention
(fortunately none of it yet
hysterical), most of which
has been- focused upon the
question of the Rosenberg's
guilt, which in the eyes of
some reviewers, the book
positively establishes.
And
leading
the
spearhead was not the
Ku Klux Klan or leftover
American Fascist sup-
porters of Father
Coughlin, William Dud-
ley Pelley and Gerald
L.K. Smith. Those who
accused the Rosenbergs,
the men who would pro-
secute them, and even the
judge who would sen-
tence them to death were
all Jews.
"I am mean enough to try to
stay here (on the Supreme
Court) long enough so that
Kaufman will be too old to
succeed me." Frankfurter,
in fact, blocked Kaufman's
appointment to the Appeals
Court for four years.
Kaufman was supported
by Representative Emanuel
Celler, but Frankfurter's al-
lies were more powerful.
They were Senators Jacob
Javits and Lyndon B.
Johnson.
One place where Jews
were not to be found was on
Kaufman was out-
the jury. Those with "iden- wardly biased against
tifiable Jewish names" were the Rosenbergs. Was he
immediately excused, but motivated by fear of
this was by prearrangement being criticized if he
with both sides. After the showed any leniency
trial, the jury foreman said, toward his fellow Jews?
"I felt good that this was Did he feel that he could
strictly a Jewish show. It only prove his patriotism
was Jew against Jew. It (and that of his wife's
wasn't the Christians hang- family) by going out of his
ing the Jews."
way to stress his lack of
Yet this foreman may favoritism and show that
have held strong anti- he could be as harsh as
Semitic feelings of his own. any Gentile assigned to
As the jury was about to an- this odious task? Would
nounce its verdict, a re- this reaffirm the respec-
porter for the Associated tability of Jews before
Press (like the foreman, he the Christian world?
was of Italian descent)
Certainly Kaufman was a
examined the room used by hero worshipper of J. Edgar
the jury for their delibera- Hoover. A former senior
tions. He noticed a sheet of FBI official recalled that
paper near where the fore- "Hoover was like Jesus
man would have sat. On it Christ to him."
was written "Jude" — the
But Kaufman's punish-
German word for Jew which ment for the Rosenbergs
appeared on the yellow Star was far harsher than even
of David which Jews were that suggested by Hoover.
made to wear by order of the The death sentence imposed
Nazis. The reporter feared upon Ethel Rosenberg went
Thanks to the Freedom that the left-wing press far beyond anything the
of Information Act, that would get hold of the paper government ever wanted.
godfather of so many and use it to charge the jury And Kaufman's many im-
books, the authors had with anti-Semitism. So he proprieties as described in
access to over 200,000 gave it to the FBI.
this book — including ex
pages of previously
Another juror was later parte (one-sided or parti-
classified documents
quoted as saying, "I felt like san) communications with
from the files of the FBI, Pontius Pilate washing his the government — are to-
CIA and other investiga- hands." Author Howard tally inexcusable. Kaufman
tive agencies.
Fast once charged that the even continued to interfere
But to this reviewer, the Rosenberg trial was in the case after it had left
book's many revelations lay "exactly the old technique of his jurisdiction.
bare a more ominous side of the Jewish tribunal em-
When Judge Kaufman
the story. Almost without ployed by Hitler." And Fast presided over the earlier
exception, the villains are could have only suspected Brothman-Moskowitz trial,
all Jews. And they are not what the authors of this the prosecutors were Irving
the typical "bad guys in book now confirm. It is Saypol and his young assis-
black hats."
amazing that no one, at tant, Roy Cohn. Both men
To attempt to remove the least publicly, ever corn- were to play the same role in
Rosenberg case from any pared it to the trial of Jesus the Rosenberg-Sobell trial.
study of American — and Christ.
The spectre of Roy
particularly postwar —
The mountains of dis- Cohn, the man we al-
anti-Semitism is sheer folly. turbing evidence un- ready love to hate, looms
The major causes celebres of earthed by Radosh and large in this stor Gohn,
American radicalism in the Milton are more than of course, used his asso-
first half of the 20th Cen- mere backup for the ciation with the Rosen-
tury: the highly publicized claims advanced by berg case as a
cases of Tom Mooney, Sacco openly - Communist springboard to his posi-
and Vanzetti and the writers like Fast. Beyond tion as assistant to Sena-
Scottsboro Boys, only in- the issue of the very guilt tor Joseph McCarthy.
volved Jews peripherally, or innocence of the But it is prosecutor
usually after the fact and on Rosenbergs, it is impera- Saypol who is shown to
the side of the defense.
tive to take a closer look have compromised him-
Certainly some of the at the main actors in this self almost as heavily as
immediately preceding "Jewish show."
Judge Kaufman.
postwar -trials of Com-
The trial judge: Irving R.
Saypol first came to the
munists involved Jews
Kaufman, today one of the attention of the federal gov-
notably Judith Coplon — senior members of the 2nd ernment in his role as pro-
but the Rosenberg-Sobell U.S. Court of Appeals. His secutor at the trial of ac-
spy case was to be the big wife's maiden name was cused Communist William
one. To the French, it was Helen Rosenberg, no rela- Remington, who denied
an American Dreyfus Case. tion, of course, to the defen- under oath his involvement
But in the heart of both Jew dants.
with the so-called "Red Spy
and anti-Semite alike, it
Judge Kaufman was Queen" Elizabeth Bentley.
struck an even older chord. clearly ambitious. He Although Saypol knew that
It was a direct throwback to wanted an appointment to the foreman of the grand
the age-old charge that the "Jewish Seat" on the jury, who had been instru-
Jews had dual loyalties.
Supreme Court of the mental in bringing in the
The very image of the United States and assumed indictment against Re-
Jew as a patriotic Ameri- he would succeed Felix mington, had earlier been
can, so carefully nur- Frankfurter there. The lat- hired by Bentley's publisher
tured during the war, ter, once the champion of to ghostwrite her forthcom-
was now under attack. Sacco and Vanzetti, vowed, ing book, he not only pro-
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, September 9, 1983 125
A Search for the Truth'
ceeded with the case but
called Bentley as an expert
witness.
His sense of ethics in the
Rosenberg trial remained
on that level, and he was
rewarded with elevation to
a seat on the New York
State Supreme Court. A
Court of Appeals judge (ob-
viously not Kaufman)
would later characterize
Saypol's behavior at the
Rosenberg trial as being
"totally reprehensible."
But if this behavior might
have been- expected from
a' prosecutor in such a
highly-charged case, what
can be said in defense of the
Rosenberg's own lawyer,
Emanuel Bloch? For star-
ters, not much. The record of
his ineptitude in defending
his clients is so damaging
that the authors suggest his
courtroom performance
verged on malpractice.
Certainly he later effec-
tively blocked efforts by
other interested lawyers
(who were, incidentally,
not Jewish) to commute
the Rosenberg's death
sentence. But in the
damning assessment of
an active Rosenberg par-
tisan, Bloch "did all he
was capable of doing,
which is sad. Because he
was not capable of doing
anything."
As all serious students of
the case know, the major
(and most damaging) ac-
cusations against the
Rosenbergs were made by
Ethel Rosenberg's brother,
David Greenglass, and his
wife, Ruth. The "family
feud" aspect of the trial re-
ceived wide coverage, espe-
cially in the Yiddish press:
So when it came time to
find a prison informant to
spy on Julius Rosenberg, it
should be no surprise that
the prison authorities were
able to come up with a Jew:
Jerome Eugene Tartakow.
Although the FBI described
him as "an informant of un-
known reliability," the lat-
ter succeeded in planting
him inside the law office of
Emanuel Bloch. It was Tar-
takow the trusted who
would drive the Rosenberg
children up to Sing Sing for
visit's with their imprisoned
parents.
But even as reprehensible
as Tartakow's behavior may
have been (he was, after all,
already a- convicted crimi-
nal when he offered to be-
come an informer), what
can one make of the actions
of the famed Jewish civil
libertarian Morris L. Ernst
(he was co-counsel of
ACLU) who also offered to
serve the FBI as an in-
former upon the Rosen-
bergs? The damage done by
Ernst goes far beyond any-
thing resulting from Tar-
takow's betrayal.
Ernst painted a
"psychological study" of
the Rosenbergs which
showed that "Julius is
the slave and his wife,
Ethel, the master." Even-
tually, this piece of pop
psychology became the
very justification for the
execution of Ethel
Rosenberg. It became so
ingrained in the official
government psyche that
it would appear not only
in a statement by the at-
torney general (Brow-
nell) but in a personal let-
ter of then-president
Dwight D. Eisenhower in
which he discussed his
reasons for not granting
clemency to the couple.
ceded on behalf of the
Rosenbergs by sending a re-
quest for "mercy" which was
kept from the eyes of
Eisenhower's predecessor,
President Harry S Truman.
Then, of course, there
were the French, from
philosophers like Sartre
to politicians like Faure
and Auriol, who vainly
sought clemency. Con-
trast this attitude to the
United States where
newspaper editors were
receiving a deluge of
crude anti-Semitic letters
and poems exulting in the
impending executions.
One of the last books read
on Death Row by Julius
Rosenberg was a study of
the Nazi doctors, the war
criminals, many of whose
death sentences had later
been commuted. But Nazis
are one matter and Jewish
New York Communists still
another. As indeed the re-
cent revelations of the
American role in protecting
Klaus Barbie prove.
Despite even Papal inter-
cession, the Rosenbergs
But Ernst wasn't finished were doomed to die for their
yet. His last attempt sought ill-defined crime. General
official permission for a Leslie Groves, the Army
brainwashing scheme to officer in charge of the de-
convert the Rosenbergs to velopment of the atomic
anti-Communism. In this bomb,. later testified, "I
hare-brained plan, the think that the data that
Rosenbergs would receive went out in the case of the
clemency in exchange for Rosenbergs was of minor
their agreeing to "appeal to value. I would never say
Jews in all countries to get that again publicly . . . be-
out of the Communist cause . . . in the overall pic-
movement and seek to de- ture, the Rosenbergs de-
stroy it."
served to habg." (They died
And of course there were in the electric chair.)
the influential Jewish col-
There is a classic tradi-
umnists (friends of Roy tion in literature that be-
Cohn) like Walter Winchell, gins with the premise of
Leonard Lyons and Hy "what if . . ." And indeed,
Gardner, who kept up a what if the Rosenbergs had
steady stream of FBI- been Gentiles? It is ironic
approved diatribes against that no one else has since
the Rosenbergs in what paid for the same crime with
were supposed to be their their lives. But perhaps it is
nationally-syndicated "gos- doubtful that anyone could
sip" columns.
put together a team of Gen-
Who then spoke for the tile prosecutors, de fense at-
Rosenbergs if their very torneys, judges, stool pi-
enemies were Jews? The geons and even informers —
aforementioned J. Edgar much less victims — who
Hoover, certainly no hero of would be as eager to prove
civil rights advocates, was their patriotism to say, the
the only government official Jews of America.
to raise objection to the
The Rosenbergs deserved
prospect of a double execu- far better. And so, as Jews,
tion that would leave two did we.
children orphaned. And -
even Pope Pius XII, who has
Diseases of the soul are
been vilified by many histo- more dangerous and more
rians for his lack of concern numerous than those of the
for the Jewish victims of body.
Nazi persecution, inter-
—Cicero
_
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