Digital History
Postwar America: 1945 - 1960
| The Rosenberg Case | Previous | Next |
| Digital History ID 3417 | ||
In 1951, in the midst of the Korean war, a federal judge found Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their associate, Morton Sobell, guilty of having passed atomic secrets to Soviet agents. Ethel Rosenberg's brother, David Greenglass, had worked at the Los Alamos nuclear research station in New Mexico. The couple was sentenced to death. Judge Irving Kaufman told the Rosenbergs: "I consider your crime worse than murder."
It now appears likely that Ethel Rosenberg, who was sent to the electric chair in 1953, along with her husband for the crime of atomic espionage, was at most a minor participant in his activities.