The cover letter for a memorandum called \u201cThe Defense of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg: A Communist Attempt to Inject the Jewish Issue,\u201d dated March 27, 1952, warns, \u201cIn recent months Communists have been attempting to agitate concerning these condemned persons and to inject into the situation a suggestion that there are anti-Semitic implications to the conviction and the sentences. The AJC believes there is no foundation for such charges.\u201d [see below]<\/em><\/p>\n The AJC circulated another article defending the proceedings in June of 1952, entitled \u201cThe Communists Find a New Opening,\u201d in which they denied any evidence of antisemitism, concluding: \u201cOnce more we find Communists and fellow-travellers trying to make anti-Semitism and anti-communism appear synonymous…The net that is being woven from spurious threads of the Rosenberg case must be regarded as one more example of Communist trickery.\u201d They sent this report gratis to 1800 rabbis and Jewish periodicals and offered 10 additional free copies to anyone who requested them, stipulating however that they be kept \u201cwithin Jewish circles,\u201d so as not \u201cto help the Committee for the Rosenbergs to obtain the attention of the general public.\u201d [see below]<\/em><\/p>\n When Rabbi Abraham Cronbach wrote to the AJC in November of 1952, asking whether they might intercede with the President for \u201cthe commutation of this dreadful sentence,\u201d AJC director S. Andhil Fineberg responded: \u201cI believe that the evil consequences of what you are doing by serving as a tool of the Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case are infinitely greater than any good you might accomplish\u2026I believe that the Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg case is an instrument of the Communist Party rather than a means for saving their lives.\u201d [below]<\/em><\/p>\n Over and over again, in their efforts to appear anti-communist and above reproach, the AJC asserted that the treatment of the Rosenbergs was completely fair. They strove to make it clear which side they (and all good patriotic Americans) were on.<\/p>\n Perhaps this is not surprising in a political climate of fear and paranoia, when anyone suspected of harboring Communist sympathies or holding radical political views was subject to investigation, often leading to arrest or imprisonment. Mere suspicion could result in the loss of current or future employment. The Rosenberg case only heightened mistrust against a Jewish community already under a cloud in American society, as members of a demographic associated with radicalism and socialism.<\/p>\n Obsessively monitoring public opinion regarding Jews and Communism, as early as 1950 the AJC commissioned a survey about the \u201cImpact of Atom-Spy Publicity,\u201d for which they interviewed people on the streets of New York City, Washington, D.C., and Detroit, inquiring: \u201cWhat do you think of the atom bomb spy stories appearing in the newspapers?\u201d Though some responses were non-committal or generically anti-Communist, many were blatantly antisemitic: [below]<\/em><\/p>\n A memorandum from February 28, 1952, warning Jewish organizations not to let their buildings be used for meetings in support of the Rosenbergs, clearly spells out the roots of this anxiety among the Jewish community: \u201cWe have a directive to dissociate Jews and Communism in the American mind\u2026Jewish organizations should be warned that the FBI has been making careful note of pro-Communist meetings and that these pro-Rosenberg meetings will surely go into the record\u2026The Jewish community owes nothing to the Rosenbergs and must not be put into a position wherein the general public assumes that the Jewish community is on the side of the Rosenbergs\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n In a letter dated December 23, 1952, Fineberg acknowledges, \u201cWe are in a tough situation, skillfully concocted by the Communists. If they were not conducting an international campaign of slander against the United States, the survival of the Rosenbergs by granting clemency would be a different matter than it now is\u2026It is a very ticklish problem wherein we can and should make it clear that there is no \u2018Jewish Interests\u2019 and no civil liberties issues involved.\u201d [below]<\/em><\/p>\n In this environment, all of the mainstream Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League of B\u2019nei B\u2019rith, the American Jewish Congress, the Jewish War Veterans of the United States, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, banded together with the American Jewish Committee to issue a statement condemning the efforts by the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case to \u201cinject the false issue of anti-Semitism.\u201d [below] <\/em>The AJC files at YIVO contain pages of correspondence with these other groups, sharing their various memoranda and reports asserting that justice was served in the Rosenberg trial, and strategizing about how to distance themselves from the Rosenberg defenders. In a 1956 letter, Fineberg exults, \u201cI am extremely glad that we managed to keep all prominent Jews out of this Communist trickery except Rabbi Cronbach and Albert Einstein.\u201d<\/p>\n Taking a page from a Cold War spy novel, AJC officers infiltrated meetings of the Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case in Los Angeles, New York [below]<\/em>, and Minneapolis and wrote up detailed findings to share with AJC headquarters. The summary of the Los Angeles event warns that the \u201cCommittee is liable to drag huge numbers of unsuspecting non-communists into their sphere…\u201d Later in the report, <\/em>in a section with the heading \u201cA Pick-Up,\u201d the writer describes flirting with a \u201cvery good-looking young woman, whose eyes had hung with near ecstasy on every speaker\u2019s lips.\u201d He suggests a cup of coffee at Langer\u2019s Delicatessen, where he engages her in conversation by pretending to be dissatisfied with the \u201cAmerican way of life,\u201d securing an invitation to her home as well as future meetings.<\/p>\n Fineberg testified in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee in August of 1955 [below]<\/em>, reiterating that the Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg case was a Communist enterprise and asserting that \u201cat no time did anti-Semitism play any part in the Rosenberg case.\u201d He assured the House Committee that the Rosenberg supporters \u201creceived no funds from any synagogue, Jewish welfare organization, federation of philanthropy or any of the thousands of other Jewish organizations which have the respect of American Jews and their neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n The AJC proudly advertised the fact that the House Un-American Activities Committee used AJC materials in compiling their 157-page expose of \u201cCommunist Exploitation of the Rosenberg case,\u201d entitled \u201cTrial by Treason.\u201d [below]<\/em><\/p>\n Fineberg went so far as to write a book in 1953, The Rosenberg Case: Fact and Fiction<\/em><\/a>\u00a0[below],\u00a0<\/em>maintaining the guilt of the Rosenbergs and the fairness of the trial. In it, he castigates the coordinated efforts in defense of the Rosenbergs as \u201cthe most sensational propaganda campaign ever conducted over the fate of two individuals.\u201d Letters in the AJC files reveal that the U.S. State Department financed the book\u2019s translation and distribution around the world, partly as a counterbalance to the successful publication of The Death House Letters of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg<\/em><\/a>, which was circulating among Rosenberg supporters: \u201c\u2026the State Department has been looking for an adequate presentation of the American side of the case for dissemination among Europeans\u2026the State department\u2019s initial order was for 3,000 copies. They are also planning to have it translated into 18\u00a0languages\u2026In addition, the Public Affairs Officers attached to our Embassies abroad will be asked to make key distribution of the book in quarters where they feel it will be most needed.\u201d<\/p>\n In Francine Prose\u2019s 2021 novel The Vixen<\/em>, set in the early 1950s in New York City, a young Jewish editor at an august publishing house is tasked with editing a potboiler featuring a treasonous femme fatale named \u201cEsther Rosenstein,\u201d an ill-conceived rightwing effort to bolster popular opinion against the Rosenbergs. One of the principals of the publishing firm is a former spy, working closely with the State Department to circulate this \u201cpatriotic\u201d fiction.<\/p>\n Coincidentally, it was while preparing a \u201cshow and tell\u201d of archival material for an online Center for Jewish History book discussion about The Vixen, <\/em>for which we were joined by the author, that this AJC material was uncovered. When she was informed about the existence of The Rosenberg Case: Fact and Fiction<\/em>, the Fineberg book financed and distributed by the State Department, a surprising analogue to her invented book-within-a-book,<\/em> author Francine Prose was \u201cblown away,\u201d exclaiming, \u201cIt often happens that fiction turns out to have an uncanny relationship to the truth. I’ve seen it happen before, but it’s always startling.\u201d<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, a book asserting that justice was served with the execution of the Rosenbergs and that the opposition were all Communists found an enthusiastic audience among right-wing antisemites. The AJC found themselves on the defensive in October of 1954, when an associate sent in a page from The Defender,<\/em> Gerald Winrod\u2019s antisemitic magazine, which appears to contain an ad for Fineberg\u2019s book [above, lower right]<\/em>. Somewhat indignantly, Fineberg responded: \u201cNeither the publisher nor I, nor anyone else with whom I am on speaking terms, has ever had any contact with Winrod in regard to the book…I am sure that his people will get nothing out of my book that will make them more anti-Semitic than they already are.\u201d [below]<\/em><\/p>\n While the AJC was more concerned with dissociating Jews from Communism and anti-American sentiment than defending the Rosenbergs or denouncing antisemitism, they were certainly not alone in this attitude, which reflects the pervasive fear and paranoia of the time. And there was one Rosenberg they did publicly support. No relation to Julius and Ethel, though tainted by association, Anna Rosenberg<\/a> was falsely accused of Communist ties after her 1950 nomination as Assistant Secretary of Defense and was dismissed as \u201ca little Yiddish woman from Austria-Hungary\u201d on the Senate floor during a contentious confirmation hearing. AJC officials were aghast at the bogus Communist allegations, as well as the suggestion that an immigrant could not faithfully serve her country, and even investigated the possibility of suing one of her accusers. The charges were deemed unfounded by the Committee on Armed Forces, and Rosenberg was subsequently confirmed by the full Senate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Lauren Gilbert Director of Public Services, Center for Jewish History \u201cA Very Ticklish Problem\u201d: The AJC Response to the Rosenberg Trial & Execution Convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed 70 years ago on June 19, 1953, the first and only American civilians to face the death penalty for espionage. At the time, many believed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1280,1048,41,1279,1277,1281,1278,1276,372],"class_list":["post-3934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-ajc","tag-american-jewish-committee","tag-american-jewish-history","tag-cold-war","tag-communism","tag-julius-and-ethel-rosenberg","tag-mccarthyism","tag-rosenberg-trial","tag-yivo-collections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3934"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4407,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934\/revisions\/4407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/The-Communists-and-the-Rosenbergs-786x1024.jpg\")
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<\/a>\u201cJews should not be permitted to work in atom laboratories.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\u201cEvery Jew is a Communist. Just go to Union Square and you will see that everyone has a hooked nose. Hitler didn\u2019t finish the job.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t kid me, you know as well as I do who\u2019s helping the Reds. It\u2019s those god damn Jews.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\u201cDo you read the papers? What are their names? It isn\u2019t Giuseppe, Kelly, or O\u2019Flaherty! Shoot the bastards!\u201d<\/h4>\n
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<\/a>Selections from the materials discussed above are on display on the mezzanine at the Center for Jewish History through July 2023.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
<\/h3>\n