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.

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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

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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 ©