![]() ![]() And finally, the escalating casualties in the Korean War created a highly charged political atmosphere of distrust and obsessive fear of communism, and the need to ascribe blame for post-war gains by the communist bloc. The Jewish establishment’s fear of anti-Semitic backlash in the wake of anticommunist sentiment resulted in a further distancing between itself and the accused. Jews from various walks of life were particularly targeted because of their disproportionately large affiliation and/or sympathies with leftist politics during the 1930s and 1940s. ![]() The increasing hostility and hysterics of Cold War politics assumed its most virulent form in the anticommunist witch-hunts of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations. The trial and execution of the Rosenbergs was a direct outgrowth of the political and social climate of the early 1950s. Convicted and executed on June 19, 1953, with her husband Julius Rosenberg, for conspiracy to divulge atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, Rosenberg was only the second woman in the United States to be executed by the federal government. To some she was an arch-villain, to others a crass ideologue, and yet to others a hapless victim. The couple was convicted on March 29, 1951, and sentenced to death, the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage-related activity during the Cold War.įew Jewish American women evoke as varied and passionate a response as Ethel Rosenberg. But the established Jewish community, fearing any association with Jewish radicalism, rejected this charge. Indeed, when she and her husband, Julius, were charged with espionage, attempts were made by their fellow "leftists" to link their prosecution with antisemitism. Ethel Rosenberg’s Jewish identity was forged not by any ties to traditional Judaism but by her political radicalism. ![]()
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