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Case file s1237 · States and spies · 1953
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1953
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg NYWTS: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, separated by heavy wire screen as they leave U.S. Court House after being found guilty by jury.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg NYWTS. Roger Higgins, photographer from "New York World-Telegram and the Sun". Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
June 1953
Place
Sing Sing prison, Ossining, New York, USA
Field
Soviet espionage
Legal tradition
New York guardianship and adoption law; federal grand jury secrecy · Common law
Historical event
McCarthy era and Soviet atomic espionage
States and spiesPostwarNorth AmericaUnited States

The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953, child-care agencies petitioned for custody of their sons and the boys' trust fund, and the sons have spent 70 years on their mother's case

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union and electrocuted at Sing Sing in June 1953. Their sons, Michael and Robert, were 10 and 6. The Rosenbergs' will named their lawyer, Emanuel Bloch, as guardian, and he placed the boys with Abel and Anne Meeropol. In 1954 New York City police took the boys from the Meeropols' home and put them in an orphanage. Private Jewish child-care agencies petitioned for legal custody of the boys and of their trust fund. The Meeropols won the custody fight and adopted the boys, who took the name Meeropol and kept their parents' identity from all but close friends. In the 1970s the brothers used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain government files, and in 1975 they published We Are Your Sons, arguing that both parents were innocent. In September 2008 Morton Sobell, 91, convicted with the Rosenbergs, admitted that he and Julius had passed military and industrial secrets to the Soviets, and said Ethel knew but took no active part. The sons then said their father had been a spy. On 15 July 2015 the National Archives posted the grand jury testimony of Ethel's brother David Greenglass, released by a court order of 19 May 2015 after his death; a court had withheld it in 2008 at his objection. Ethel Rosenberg has not been pardoned.

What the law took from it

The will's choice of guardian decided where the boys grew up, and the trust fund raised for them was part of what the agencies sought.

Record vs. record

The Famous Trials account dates the adoption to 1957; a University of South Carolina thesis dates it to 1958:

famous-trials.comscholarcommons.sc.edu
Sources
  1. archives.govGovernment record
  2. scholarcommons.sc.eduScholarship
  3. famous-trials.comPress
  4. portside.orgPress
  5. NBC NewsPress
  6. history.comPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953, child-care agencies petitioned for custody of their sons and the boys' trust fund, and the sons have spent 70 years on their mother's case,” story s1237, https://www.celebrity.estate/rosenbergs-1953, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

States and spiesPostwarNorth AmericaCommon lawUnited States