Final Verdict by Walter Schneir

Author:Walter Schneir [Schneir, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-935554-79-0
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2010-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

Testifying about her later conversation with her husband in Albuquerque, Ruth again emphasized the role of Ethel:

.… [I] told him that I had objected to it but that Ethel had told me that David would be interested, that he would want this, that this was right for him, and that I should at least tell him about it, and my husband did not give me an immediate answer; at first he, too, refused, and the following day he told me that he would consent to do this.

Of course, neither the jurors nor the defense had any idea at the time of the trial that David’s testimony implicating his sister in his recruitment contradicted his earlier confessions. Those confessions were not publicly available until decades after the executions, when they were pried from the FBI by long litigation under the Freedom of Information Act.

Also obtained through the Freedom of Information Act was an unanticipated and fascinating find—the Greenglass wartime correspondence, a large number of handwritten letters exchanged by David and Ruth and seized by FBI agents from an old footlocker in their apartment on the day David was taken into custody. The importance of the letters is that they disclose something of the Greenglasses’ actual state of mind, as opposed to the personas they presented to the jurors. In their courtroom testimony, the Greenglasses cast themselves as an extraordinarily malleable couple with no apparent reason for their misdeeds other than the influence of the Rosenbergs. The prosecution followed this line, and U.S. Attorney Saypol excoriated Julius and Ethel for “dragging” David into the conspiracy.

All of the letters below were written in 1943 and 1944, prior to the recruitment. In their private communications, the two frequently discussed their political convictions. Like the early apostolic Christians who had abiding faith that the Last Judgment was imminent and would occur in their own lifetimes, David and Ruth were convinced that a socialist world was almost within their grasp. David wrote to Ruth:

Dearest, I love you because we have such similar ideals and beliefs. These beliefs are the cement with which our physical and emotional affection is welded into what humanity calls love.

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