Rosenberg Son to Speak in ABQ & Santa Fe

Robert Meeropol (photo right), the son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, will give a lecture on "McCarthy Era Lessons for Bush's America" following a 5:00 PM potluck Sunday at the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice. He'll also sign copies of his memoir, "An Execution in the Family." The event is free but bring an item to share if attending the dinner.

On Monday, Meeropol will speak at The Forum at the College of Santa Fe at 7:00 PM. For more information contact Mark Behr at 505-310 0769.

Meeropol's parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (see photo left), were executed by electric chair in June of 1953, during the Cold War, for their conviction in what was called the "trial of the century" for conspiracy to commit espionage. The case was prosecuted by the infamously unethical and self-serving Roy Cohn, the right-hand man of Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy was eventually discredited for his Communist witch hunts and censured by the Senate. Robert was 6 at the time of the execution and his brother, Michael, was 10.

For information about the Rosenberg Fund for Children, founded by Robert Meeropol, go to https://www.rfc.org. You can read more about Meeropol's New Mexico appearances here, including background information on his speech. More about Meeropol can be found at Wikipedia, which also has extensive information about the Rosenbergs and their controversial trial and execution.

According to an article in the Albuquerque Journal:

Meeropol warns of echoes from those times, of dangerous similarities. He will speak about those parallels in Albuquerque on Sunday.

"If you look back to the 1950s and the anti-Communism scare, what you find is the public was told there was an international Communist conspiracy out there to destroy our way of life. Therefore, concerns revolving around national security had to take precedence over civil liberties, and civil liberties had to take a back seat. We were at war."

Back then, Meeropol said, policy was propelled by fear, and so it is now: "Pull out the word 'Communist' and plug in the word 'terrorist.' ''