National Archives Hosts Forum on Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Case February 5
Press Release · Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Washington, DC

On Thursday, February 5, at 7 PM, the National Archives presents a forum on the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg case. This event is free and open to the public and will be held in the William G. McGowan Theater of the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, and will be streamed live on YouTube. Attendees should use the Special Events entrance, located on Constitution Avenue at 7th Street, NW. The building is fully accessible. Metro: Yellow or Green lines, Archives/Navy Memorial station.

Journalist Marvin Kalb will moderate a panel of historians and authors who will discuss the espionage case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Panelists include: Ronald Radosh, co-author of The Rosenberg File; Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, co-authors of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America; Steven Usdin, author of Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley; Allen Hornblum, author of The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb, and Mark Kramer, director of Cold War Studies, Harvard University, and Senior Fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Rosenberg-related records at the National Archives

• Read formerly secret Grand Jury testimony transcripts from the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. These transcripts and trial evidence are held at the National Archives at New York.
• View the Universal News Clip from April 5, 1951, announcing the death penalty verdict.
• See the Jell-O Box Exhibit used in the espionage trial and read the Pieces of History blog post about this unusual piece of evidence.
• Examine documents from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library that detail one of the first decisions facing the recently inaugurated President: whether to grant executive clemency to the Rosenbergs:
  • Read the appeal from Ethel Rosenberg to President Eisenhower, urging him to “take counsel with your good wife; of statesmen there are enough and to spare.”
  • See the telegram from Julius’s mother to Mamie Eisenhower: “I beg of you to act…for an old woman whose days are spent weeping.”
  • Read the letter written by Michael Rosenberg (now Meeropol) to the President, pleading: “Please don’t leave my brother and I without a Mommy and Daddy.”

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For press information contact the National Archives Public Affairs staff at 202-357-5300.

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