Michael Meeropol (born Michael Rosenberg on March 10, 1943) is an American retired professor of economics. He is the older son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted communist spies. Born in New York City, as Michael Rosenberg, Meeropol spent his early childhood living in New York and attending local school there.
His father Julius, an electrical engineer, and his mother Ethel (née Greenglass), a union organizer, were members of the Communist Party USA. When Michael was seven years old, his parents were apprehended. In 1951, they were convicted and sentenced to death for conspiracy to commit espionage related to the passing of atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. After two years, during which they both maintained their innocence, and a worldwide campaign for executive clemency raged, they were executed in June 1953.
Early life and education
During the trial, Michael and his younger brother Robert lived first with their maternal grandmother, Tessie Greenglass, until November1950, when she placed them in the Hebrew Children's Home in the Bronx. In June1951, they moved in with their paternal grandmother, Sophie Rosenberg, in upper Manhattan until June1952, at which time they were taken in by family friends, Ben and Sonia Bach, in Toms River, New Jersey, from June1952 until the December after their parents' executions on June 19, 1953. The Toms River school superintendent "turned the boys away as non-residents".[1]
The brothers were eventually adopted by the lyricist, librettist, and musician Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne, whose first children had been stillborn. Taking their last name, Michael and Robert grew up first in Manhattan and then (after 1961) in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.[2]
Meeropol eventually became an economist, teaching at Western New England College (now Western New England University), a small private college in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1998 he authored Surrender: How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution. Many of his articles have advocated liberal to left-wing economic policies, including, in 2005, his opposition to the Bush administration's efforts to partially privatize Social Security. Since September2006 he has been a monthly commentator on the Albany NPR-affiliate WAMC radio.
He and his brother Robert have written about their parents as well as participated in documentaries about them. Together they wrote We Are Your Sons (1975). A second edition was published in 1986 (University of Illinois Press) with three new chapters, including a rebuttal to the book, The Rosenberg File. Meeropol said that even though the authors got it "right" about the (partial) guilt of Julius Rosenberg, Michael Meeropol said they were "right" like a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Meeropol separately edited a complete edition of his parents' prison correspondence, The Rosenberg Letters (1994). Though currently not speaking in public about his parents' case as much as his brother, he remains a strong advocate for his parents. His daughter Ivy Meeropol interviewed both brothers about the Rosenberg trial and his childhood for her 2004 film Heir to an Execution, and included new comments from Michael in her 2019 documentary on Roy Cohn. In the latter, we see the younger Michael Meeropol debating Roy Cohn in 1981, as well as re-visiting Sing Sing in September2018.[3]
Meeropol retired as professor of economics and chair of the department at Western New England University in December2008. He worked for four years at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York teaching economics and interdisciplinary studies. He taught his last class at John Jay in May2014.[citation needed]
In 2013, he co-authored a textbook, Principles Of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. austerity policies.[4]
In June of 2022 he openly called for non-violent nuisance protest at the homes of NRA board members because they enable mass murderers. The exact quote as reported by FOX is:
"I believe NRA board members should be subjected to personal attacks," ... "I am not recommending violence but certainly active civil disobedience and nuisance activities that might land oneself in jail are definitely called for."
He also floated the idea of throwing red paint on the front stoop, driveway and lawn of their homes in order to make them "uncomfortable."
Marriage and family
In December 1965, Meeropol married Ann Karusaitis. They have two children, Ivy and Greg, and two grandchildren. His wife died in May 2019.[citation needed]
Current position on parents' executions
In 2008, after the Rosenberg co-defendant Morton Sobell admitted that he and Julius Rosenberg had engaged in espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union during World WarII, Michael and Robert Meeropol agreed that their father was a Soviet spy. But they reiterated what they perceived to be the failures of the government prosecution:
"[W]hatever atomic bomb information their father passed to the Russians was, at best, superfluous; the case was riddled with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct; their mother was convicted on flimsy evidence to place leverage on her husband, and neither deserved the death penalty."[5]
A month later, the brothers published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times stating that Sobell's confession revealed no detail about the theft of the atom bomb design. They noted that the witness Ruth Greenglass' recently released grand jury testimony[6] said nothing about Ethel Rosenberg's alleged spying activities, for which the government convicted her.[7]
The Meeropol brothers have endorsed the conclusions of Walter Schneir, in his posthumously published book Final Verdict, that Greenglass's version of events was concocted – that Julius Rosenberg had been given notice of termination by the KGB in early 1945, and thus was out of the espionage loop when a cross-section drawing of an implosion-type atomic bomb (exhibit8 at the Rosenberg Trial) was passed to the Soviets. Schneir said that David and/or Ruth Greenglass turned that drawing and descriptive material over to a KGB agent in December1945 – not, as testified at the trial, to Julius Rosenberg in September1945.
In 2015 after the death of David Greenglass, his secret grand jury testimony was released. Claiming that that testimony supported their view that their mother was not an espionage agent (twice Greenglass under oath before the Grand Jury asserted he had never spoken with his sister about any of his espionage activities with Julius Rosenberg or Ruth Greenglass) the brothers Meeropol wrote an op-ed in The New York Times demanding that the US government exonerate their mother. On September 28, 2015, the date that would have been Ethel Rosenberg's 100thbirthday, the brothers and eight members of their extended families (including one great-grandchild of the Rosenbergs) gathered on the steps of New York's City Hall to receive two proclamations – one by 13City Council members and one by the Borough President of Manhattan honoring Ethel Rosenberg and decrying her reputedly false conviction and execution.
Meeropol and his brother Robert appeared on the CBS news magazine show 60 Minutes in the fall of 2016 arguing that their mother deserved exoneration because of the recent release of grand jury testimony by her chief accuser, David Greenglass, which directly contradicted his trial testimony against her. They submitted requests to President Barack Obama for a proclamation to in effect nullify the original jury verdict because of the perjuries involved in the government's case against her. This request was accompanied by the documents including grand jury minutes supporting their arguments. On December 1, 2016, Meeropol and his brother Robert stood outside the White House gate to symbolically re-create the effort they engaged in back in 1953 when Michael delivered a handwritten letter to President Dwight D. Eisenhower asking for clemency for his parents to a White House guard. They turned in petitions containing more than 60,000signatures in support of their request. The request received no response, and it is unclear if President Obama was ever aware of the request.
Meeropol published a 2018 article revisiting his uncle David Greenglass' testimony and role in the Rosenberg case.[8]. IN January of 2024, he published a review article of a recent biography of the sentencing Judge Irving R. Kaufman in MONTHLY REIVEW, "Judge Irving Kaufman, the Liberal Establishment and the Rosenberg Case." IN 2024, he embarked on a national speaking tour to warn of the dangers of fascism posed by Donald Trump and his supporters. Noting that his parents claimed to have been "the first victims of American fascism" he argued that luckily they were wrong and noted important differences between the 1950s when there was no viable left-wing political movement in the United States and the present when the changing demographics of America has created a sense of foreboding among too many white privileged people who fear the (bugus) "great replacement." "It is those people led by dangerous demagogues who provide the shock troops for Trump and Trumpism," he argues.
Related Research Articles
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered an enemy.
Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were an American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to be executed during peacetime. Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working in Los Alamos, was convicted in the United Kingdom.
Abel Meeropol was an American songwriter and poet whose works were published under his pseudonym Lewis Allan. He wrote the poem "Strange Fruit" (1937), which was recorded by Billie Holiday.
The Rosenberg Fund for Children (RFC) is a public foundation started in 1990 by Robert Meeropol and named in honor of his parents Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the only two United States civilians executed for conspiracy to commit espionage during the Cold War.
David Greenglass was an American machinist and atomic spy for the Soviet Union who worked on the Manhattan Project. He was briefly stationed at the Clinton Engineer Works uranium enrichment facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and then worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico from August 1944 until February 1946.
Harry Gold was a Swiss-born American laboratory chemist who was convicted as a courier for the Soviet Union passing atomic secrets from Klaus Fuchs, an agent of the Soviet Union, during World War II. Gold served as a government witness and testified in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted and executed in 1953 for their roles. Gold served 15 years in prison.
Ruth Leah Greenglass was an American citizen who acted as a spy for the Soviet Union along with her husband, David Greenglass.
William Perl (1920–1970), whose original name was William Mutterperl, was an American physicist and Soviet spy.
Max Elitcher (1918–2010) was a prosecution witness in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial in 1951.
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American NKVD spymaster, who was recruited from within the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union as the primary handler of multiple highly placed moles within both the United States Federal Government and the Office of Strategic Services from 1938 to 1945. She defected by contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and debriefing about her espionage activities.
Morton Sobell was an American engineer and Soviet spy during and after World War II; he was charged as part of a conspiracy which included Julius Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel Rosenberg. Sobell worked on military and government contracts with General Electric and Reeves Instrument Corporation in the 1940s, including during World War II. Sobell was tried and convicted of espionage in 1951 and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Joel Barr, also Iozef Veniaminovich Berg and Joseph Berg, was part of the Soviet Atomic Spy Ring.
Robert Meeropol is the younger son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Meeropol was born in New York City. His father Julius was an electrical engineer and a member of the Communist Party USA. His mother Ethel, a union organizer, was also active in the Communist Party USA.
Atomic spies or atom spies were people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who are known to have illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War. Exactly what was given, and whether everyone on the list gave it, are still matters of some scholarly dispute. In some cases, some of the arrested suspects or government witnesses had given strong testimonies or confessions which they recanted later or said were fabricated. Their work constitutes the most publicly well-known and well-documented case of nuclear espionage in the history of nuclear weapons. At the same time, numerous nuclear scientists wanted to share the information with the world scientific community, but this proposal was firmly quashed by the United States government. It is worth noting that many scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were deeply conflicted about the ethical implications of their work, and some were actively opposed to the use of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear espionage is the purposeful giving of state secrets regarding nuclear weapons to other states without authorization (espionage). There have been many cases of known nuclear espionage throughout the history of nuclear weapons and many cases of suspected or alleged espionage. Because nuclear weapons are generally considered one of the most important of state secrets, all nations with nuclear weapons have strict restrictions against the giving of information relating to nuclear weapon design, stockpiles, delivery systems, and deployment. States are also limited in their ability to make public the information regarding nuclear weapons by non-proliferation agreements.
Marshall Perlin was a civil-liberties lawyer, who along with Emanuel Hirsch Bloch, defended Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He came to the trial after the sentencing, during the appeal process.
Oetje John Rogge was an American attorney who prosecuted cases for the United States government, investigated Nazi activities in the United States, and in private practice was associated with civil rights and liberal political causes. He was the prosecutor in the Great Sedition Trial, in which the U.S. government, under the initiative of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, tried dozens of isolationists and Nazi sympathizers for sedition. Although the trial was called off after the judge died midway through the trial, with the war in Europe ending months later, Rogge was successful in discrediting Nazi sympathizing U.S. politicians who were linked with Nazi propagandist agent George Sylvester Viereck. Nearly of those politicians lost their reelection campaigns.
Miriam Ruth Moskowitz was an American schoolteacher who served two years in prison after being convicted for conspiracy as an atomic spy for the Soviet Union.
Robert J. Lamphere was a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) involved in the cases of atomic spies Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, Julius Rosenberg, and Ethel Rosenberg, as well as British spy Kim Philby. "He had a hand in every major Soviet spy case from the end of World War II through the mid-1950s."
↑ Ivy Meeropol (documentary director) (June 2004) [January 2004]. "Bully. Coward. Victim: The story of Roy Cohn". official trailer (video documentary). HBO. Archived from the original on December 13, 2021. Retrieved July 14, 2020– via YouTube.
↑ Sherman, Howard J. & Meeropol, Michael (2013). Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. austerity policies (1sted.). M. E. Sharpe. ISBN9780765636119. OCLC822028601. A second edition under the same title was published by Routledge in 2018.
9. Meeropol, Michael, "Judge Irving Kaufman, the Liberal Establishment and the Rosenberg Case," MONTHLY REVIEW (Vol. 75, No. 8) January, 2024: 28-43.
External links
"Michael and Robert Meeropol". Biographies of key figures in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. School of Law. University of Missouri-Kansas City. Archived from the original on October 29, 2005.
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