|

JANE GOODMAN

Ethel Rosenberg ‘conscience of

all progressive America today’.

HAT does it feel like to wake

up alone in a prison cell every
morning, and realize that. the
“long day ahead will not bring
you into contact with another
human being except one or two
prison matrons and guards?

‘To know that the electric chair
is close by, on the same floor. as
your cell, and only a few weeks
in point of time, unless public
opinion can stay the execution-
er’s hand?

To know that your two sons,
aged 5% and 914, can visit you
only at infrequent intervals —
and Only for as long as you are

still alive to see them?

To know that your husband,
barred .in another wing about
50 feet away from you, is under
the same sentence?

To know that your own broth-
er was the prosecution’s ‘‘star’’
witness, without whose testi-
mony the ‘“‘case” against you
would have collapsed?

This is not the come-on for
a mystery story. It is, not a
tale from the days of Hitler’s
eoncentration camps. This is
the ‘situation of a 36-year old
woman in the United States to-
day. This is the plight of Ethel
Rosenberg.

e
The facts of the Rosenberg

case do not require recapitula-
tion here. What the National
Guardian said on July 22, 1951,
when it Jaunched its now fam-
ous expose series on the case,
is still true:

“That the very best that can
be said for the government’s
case against the Rosenbergs
is that it leaves such reason-
able doubt as to entitle them,
by all American legal stand-
ards, to an acquittal.

“That there are. strong
grounds for supporting the
belief that they are the vic-
tims of an out-and-out politi-
cal frameup in a period of
build-up for war, when vic-
tims are needed by the gov-
ernment, to silence the oppo-
sition at any cost. .°. 2’

Convicted in April 1951 of
atomic espionage and passing
secrets to an alleged enemy
country, mainly on the evidence
of David Greenglass and his
wife Ruth, themselves involyed
in espionage and rewarded by
the government for their testi-
mony by immunity for Ruth and
a 15-year jail sentence for Day-
id, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
were sentenced by U.S. Federal
Judge Irving Kaufman to die in
the electric chair.

e

Ethel Rosenberg has been in
prison since August 11, 1950—
until] April 11, 1951 in the Wo-
men’s Federal Detention House
on Grenwich Avenue in Man-
hattan, and since then in the
Death House in Sing Sing.

In prison she has shown her-
self of heroic stature. Nothing
that has happened to her has
eaused her to flinch, not even
being transferred to the Death
House, five days after sentence
was passed. %

It was manifestly the U.S. gov-

--ernment’s aim to try and break

her spirit by-sending her to Sing
Sing and keeping her husband
in New York, making it impos-
sible for them to see each other,

and—presumably—crushing her
by the sheer weight of isolation
and loneliness,

They guessed wrong, She even
urged Julius not to fight for a
transfer to Sing Sing, if it would
help their cause for him to stay
in New York.

She has been held virtually |

incommunicado for nearly 18
months, because no other wo-
man is -held for execution in
Sing Sing. Capital punishment
is meted out only for first degree
murder—or treason. Ethel Ros-
enberg has been sentenced to
death, although Axis Sally and
Tokio Rose—fascist agents dur-
ing the Second World ‘War
against whom mountains of evi-
dence were presented, received
—10 years’ imprisonment.

But Ethel Rosenberg is very
different from Axis Sally and
Tokio Rose.

She once signed an election
petition for Pete Cacchione, the
late Communist leader who was
elected to New York City Coun-
cil,

3 She was known to have occa-
sionally read the New York

Daily Worker.

ETHEL ROSENBERG

°

She belonged to an American
Labor party club on New York’s
East Side, where she was born,
sTew up, and lived as a young
married woman.

Unlike Axis Sally and Tokio

Rose, she worked in the civil de-. .

fense organization during the
war.
e

None ;jof these facts give the

measure of Ethel Rosenbérg as
a person, That has become ap-
parent in the course of the past
two terrible years,

During her term in the De-
tention House her name became
aijegend. The Negro and Puerto
Rican women picked up by bru-
tal New York cops, the pros-

,

titutes and victims of vagrancy
and petty larceny charges bless-
ed her name, because of her com-
passion, her understanding and
generosity. ;

The day she was. transferred
to Sing Sing, the hardened mat-
rons at the Detention House
cried openly.

In Sing Sing the matrons and
guards are likewise inured to
tragedy and suffering. But on
the days when the Rosenberg
children visit their parents, they
try to beg off, to get transfer-
red to other assignments, be-
cause they cannot bear to wit-
ness the gallantry and crucifixion
of Ethel and her husband.

What does Ethel Rosenberg
do to pass the relentless. and
endlessly dreary hours?

The answer is, pitifully little.
Almost the only thing she is
permitted to do is to read.

She is taken into a small

_ courtyard, surrounded by high

walls, where she can see a small
patch of sky overhead, for brief
periods of exercise.

Once a) week, separated by
heavy screens, she and her hus-
band see each other for an hour.
Much .less freuqently there are
visits from her two sons, Mich-
ae] and Robby.

For months the boys had to
see their parents separately, one
hour each. Recently they have
won the privilege of the whole
family being together for two
precious and agonizing hours,

Mother and father sit at op-
posite ends of a table, and may
not approach or touch one an-
other. The boys are permitted
to move around freely. They
sing together, Michael’s delight,
then, in fairness to Robby, they
play a game of cat-and-mouse,
his favorite from earliest child-
hood. They talk to the boys
about school, about their inter-

ests —- and they try to reassure
them: “‘Soon we will be together

Bene
e
Today few decent and knowl-

edgeable people believe that
Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty.
But they are dead. ‘

Competent legal authorities
are having “reasonable doubts”

about the validity of Alger Hiss’ -

conviction. If Hiss is ever shown
innocent, he will either walk out
of prison a free man, or win
some measure of restitution in
later life.

But the electric chair is jr-.

reversible. :

Ethel Rosenberg and her hus-
band are the conscience of all
progressive America today.

Their courage is a beacon and
a challenge! They are. still
alive, but the sands are running
out.

As Charles Sims, editor of the
Canadian Tribune, wrote last
week: “Canadians worked .to
Save the lives of Tom Mooney
and the Scottsboro boys. We
should exert every effort now to
help save the lives of the Rosen-
Deres sc yes

~

50-YEAR OLD DREAM

Budapest c

onstructing)

new underground railway |

gee :
All the experience gained
Metro has been placed at. the

Dy te builders of the Moscow
disposal of the Hungarian

People’s government in constructing the new Budapest Under-

ground.

BUDAPEST

ANY stories below the level
of the streets of Budapest
—this big, ever-growing city
of one and a half million in-
habitants—thousands of en-
gineers and skilled workers,
using modern machines, are
building an underground rail-
way, one of the huge projects
of Hungary’s Five Year Plan,
the first fivesmile long ‘east-
west main line of which will
be opened to traffic in 1954.

The construction of the Un-
derground brings an age-old
dream of the Budapest popu-
lation to reality: transporta-
tion in the Hungarian capital
will become faster, more com-
fortable and up to date. With
the electric trains, which will
run at a speed of 44 miles an
yhour, hundreds of thousands
of working people will save
anywhere from a half to three
quarters of an hour going to
their places of employment or
to the amusement places and

* sports grounds of the city. It
is estimated that in a single
year the people of Budapest
will gain a total of 9 million
hours through this speed-up
in traffic

Bringing Budapest trans-
portation up to date has long
been a problem. Towards the
end of the last century, when
Hungarian manufacturing in-
dustries were at the begin-
ning of their development,
Budapest city council made
plans ‘for building an under-
-ground transportation | sys-
tem.

But the only part of the
plan to come to anything was
building of a short line, little
more than a mile in length
connecting the luxurious resi-
dential section around City
‘Park with the down-town
banking area and. catering to
the comfort of a privileged
few. However, since it was
not followed by additional ,
lines it could offer no solu-
tion to the transportation dif-
ficulties of the working peo-
ple.

For a half a century all
further plans were. shelved.
Only after Hungary took its
place among the People’s De-
miocracies of eastern, Europe
was the actual construction of
the Budapest underground
begun as part of a large-scale
town-planning program.

The east-west main line is
the first one to be construct-
ed. This will link the Peo-
ple’s Stadium, now “being

built on the eastern edge of

town, with the South Railway
Station at the opposite end
of the city. This section of
the underground will touch |
the busiest thoroughfares of
Budapest and its tunnel will
lead under the Danube.

When completely finished,
the underground will consist
of a north-south and an east-
west main line diametrically
cutting across the capital and
of rings intercepting the dia-
metres in the form of concen-
tric circles.

*

The Soviet Union has lent -
effective aid in the construc-
tion of the underground,
right from the earliest phases
of the planning work, Before
construction was started, @ ~
delegation of Hungarian en-
gineers, technicians and skill-
ed workers went to Moscow
to study its: famous Metro.
Hungarian experts brought
back drawings and technical
book from the Soviet Union,
enough to fill a library.

Modern, high-capacity ma-
chines were also sent from
the Soviet Union, The first
steel sections of tubing for
the tunnels of the under-
ground came from Soviet fac-
tories. Now on the model of
these sections, Hungarian
heavy industry has also be-
gun the manufacture of tub-—
ing, The “shield” tunnel
drills are now also being pro-.
duced in the Hungarian Mav-
ag plant, according to Soviet
design, :

At every step the builders
of the (Budapest underground
enjoy the benefit of friendly
Soviet aid. They are regu-
larly kept abreast of the new-
est feats of Soviet under- .
ground construction tech-
nique. They can always turn.
to the Moscow Metro’s build-
ers for expert advice on any
problem that crops up.

The underground, which is
being built from 20 sites sim-
ultaneously, will be pattern-
ed after the Moscow Metro,
which is ai model of technical
perfection, comfortable, hy-
genic and attractive.

Even the above-ground sta-
tion buildings will be attrac-
tive. Their walls will be cov-
ered with marble and the
squares in front will be decor-
ated with fine statues and
fountains.

For the people of Budapest
it. will be the realization in
the first years of people’s der
mlocracy of a dream capital-
ism failed to fulfil in half @ —

century.

a

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 31, 1952 — Page 4 —