ROBERT AND MICHAEL ROSENBERG

The Rosenberg children...

By SHEILA LYND

ANY people ask about the Ro-
senberg children, the two

tragic little boys, orphaned at
the age of ten and six, when
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were
judicially murdered in the elec-
trie chair.

After the murder of their par-
ents, Michael, fair and blue eyed,
and little Robbie, black-haired,
black-eyed and very much like
his father, were sent away to the
country.

Friends of the family who own
a chicken farm about 70 mlies
from New York City, at Toms
River, New Jersey, offered to
bring them up along with their
ewn five-year-old son, Leo.

Bernard Bach -and his wife,
Sonya, have a modest little
house, with a wide lawn around
it, a big porch where the chil-
dren play on cold days, and all
around the house thousands of
white chickens.

This is a prosperous farming
eountry, with neat, well-kept
farmhouses, many with flocks of
ducks and geese as well as chick-
ens, and market gardens growing
tomatoes and sweet corn and
peaches.

It is a lovely region and full
of kindly people, all of whom
have welconied the little Rosen-
bergs among them with sym-
pathy and kindness.

Since the boys came here they
have settled down and have be-
gun to recover from the effects
of the years of ghastly and merci-
less strain they have endured.

They have become brown with
the sun, strong, cheerful and
friendly. Michael has put_on 18
pounds and was head of his class
at the end of the last schoool
term.

The fact that they have made
such a recovery is a _ grand
tribute to the gentle understand-
ing with which the Bachs have
treated them.

e

But the FBI has not finished
torturing the Rosenbergs yet.
Without one spark of humanity
it set about the systematic perse-
cution of the boys and of the
Bachs for taking them in.

Bernard Bach has been losing
contracts for his eggs ever since
the boys went to him, and he has

no doubt that the FBI is behind
it.

And now the two little boys
have been told that they must
leave the local school, where
they have settled down so well,
because they are not residents.
@

It is hard to imagine any child
standing up to the strain these
two little boys have had to face
and coming out of it unspoilt.

For three years their parents
were in Sing Sing prison under
sentence of death.

Michael knew all about it, fol-
lowed every effort of his mother
and father and their lawyer,
Emanuel Bloch, to get a “new
trial, until Bloch himself remark-
ed: “Michael knows as much
about this case as I do.”

At the end, when the two boys
went to Sing Sing to say goodbye
to their parents, in ‘case their last
desperate bid for clemency
should fail, they were greeted as
they left the prison by a horde
of reporters, who quizzed them

-mercilessly: «

“What did Momma say? How

“did she look?” *

And instead of crying or run-
ning away from this mob, Mich-
ael shouted back: “She said she’s
innocent,*and so she is!”
©

How could children who have
endured so much come out of it
untwisted, able to become gay
and affectionate again?

They have done so _ because
their parents taught them what
it was all about; why they were
framed, why they were fighting,
why they refused to make a false
confession to spying, because to
do so, even to saye their lives,
would have beeen to whitewash

MRS. SOPHIE ROSENBERG

love my children.—Julie.

‘Then they had to go...’

January 3, 1953 (to Emmanvel Bloch) ... Then they
had to go, and as | helped Michael with his coat he -sudden-
ly clutched me with both hands and stammered as he lower-
ed his head, “You must come home. Every day there is a
lump in my stomach when I go to bed... .

When I was in the solitude of my cell once more and
the door clanged shut behind me, | broke down and cried
like a baby because of the children’s deep hurt.

With my back to the bars, | stood facing the concrete
walls that boxed me in on all sides, and | let the pain that
tore at my insides flood out in tears.—Julie.

March 1971953... And so Robbie will be six and Mike
is ten, and they and we have been denied our birthrights: ...

Inside of me | guess I’m a softy, for when I think of
our sons and you I get such tender feelings... .

You know I’ve been reading a great deal lately, books
on nature, the physical laws, economic problems, political
and scientific works, and because | know man can work with
nature and better the world | realise how important it is to
work to make this a reality. This is the only way to truly

_ —From THE ROSENBERG LETTERS

a“

Michael especially — but he
will teach Robbie all about it,
too — understood the politics of
his parents’ martyrdom. Thus
he learned to take it with their
own fighting courage.

The temptation for Ethel Ro-
senberg to make a false confes-
sion so as to remain alive and
prevent her children from being
utterly orphaned must have been
agonisingly strong. But she
wouldn’t do. it.

She knew, and Julius Rosen-
berg knew, that they could trust
the people of the world to de-
fend and take care of their chil-

children such a legacy as few
have the chance to leave, — a
name that will live forever, and
a courage that will sustain them
all through their lives.

We, the people of the world,
have our job to do, the job with
which they entrusted us, to see
the children have every care
that love can lavish upon them.

They are orphans, but they
shall not be deprived of the joys
and opportunities of life for all
that — home life, a good educa-
tion, good clothes, good holidays,
provided by hundreds of thou-
sands of friends the world over,

MEL
COLBY

(OMPARING the United States

with the rest of the world 1
risky business these days. Be,
cause if you suggest that there
might be one or two minor €
that could stand correction be
are liable to be told to go bat
where you came from.

However, we must admit to
having a rather jaundiced 2
proach . towards the Americal
magazine literature which is ™
undating our newsstands.

There was a time when a Cit
zen could pause before a mas®
zine rack in a drug store oF #
smoke shop with the assurance
of being beguiled by a U.S. cull
ural presentation on the finer
aspects of murder, rape and )
son. Then, with a fine sweeP

“the arm one would make

: : jum
selection, and retire to an oe
den armed with a current ey j
of Americana.

What has happened t
fine, wholesome magazine a
ers which: portrayed a teen-aB
twisting his grandmothers ay
because he’s found she’s secté Hi
reading the Communist aa
festo? Where are those thet
blooded covers showing 2 ae
instructing his son on the
way to break a picket

o those
cov

line?
Sex, dear malcontents, 18 a
ing Our Way of Life in aw
background. Mind you, We top
nothing against. Sex, but of
pink before a magazine. the
these days is like being hit 9 ©
face with a chorus girl.

As a matter of fact,
Artist of the Republic, Dr ove!
sey, seems to have take sto?”
lock, stock and barrel. e

. invl
shop proprietor’s leering : me
tion of, “C’m up and . the
sometime,” we looked OV ©

titles: at
Sexual Behavior of the uns
erican Female.

ap
Is The American Contes sh
More Virile Than The
MP?

t 10

Around The- Kinsey ReP0F

Eighty Days. nth
20,000 Fathoms Under

Kinsey Report. ;

uns®

Sexual Behavior of the
erican Male.

pr.
The Secret Sex Life of
Freud.

The Adventures of Hue
ry Kinsey.

Inside and Outside SEX~

out
The Kinsey Report and
Way of Life. ne
: is
What’s happening? Is th ult
newly adopted bourge0!s

kleber

c
of than
ure? Is the bourgeoisie of unit

the war-mad rulers of the United dren, if they couldn’t do it them- watching over them and, in their cadent and dying capitalist sit

States and condone the gangster- selves. anger, staying the hands of the ed States getting its hou:

ism of the FBI. And so they died and left their persecutors. in before the end? s
ul

hee

In our next issue
What’s ahead for Canada’s political parties?

.

LESLIE MORRIS’ reply to BRUCE HUTCHISON’S . ae oe
-Is the two-party system doomed? in Maclean’s Magazine

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 30, 1953 —

pAaGe ©