The two little boys who once pleaded at the White House for their parents' lives are now men in their late 70s and early 80s, still arguing with the US government about what really happened with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Writing for the Atlantic, Amy Weiss-Meyer revisits the lives of Michael and Robby Meeropol—born Rosenberg—whose parents were executed in 1953 for allegedly passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. Drawing on archival materials, decrypted Soviet cables, and decades of interviews, Weiss-Meyer tracks how the brothers' understanding of their parents shifted from unwavering belief in their total innocence to something more complicated: acceptance that Julius did spy for the USSR, paired with a fierce insistence that Ethel didn't.
The piece follows their journey from their brutal childhood upheaval and rescue by adoptive parents Anne and Abel Meeropol, to their public reemergence in the 1970s and long campaign to reopen the case. A newly declassified 1950 memo by US code breaker Meredith Gardner, specifying that Ethel knew of her husband's work but "did not engage in the work herself," has become, for the siblings, the long-sought proof that she wasn't an active participant in any spying. Still, that leaves one big question, per Weiss-Meyer: "Why, then, should she have sacrificed herself, leaving her sons behind, particularly after Julius was executed and she was given one last chance to cooperate? Why did she choose death?" Read the full story.
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