{"id":3712,"date":"2019-11-09T19:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T02:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/?p=3712"},"modified":"2026-02-23T18:56:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T01:56:58","slug":"rosenberg-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/09\/rosenberg-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Rosenberg Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The year 2003 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Their killing had a great impact on my wife Andrea Carney (see Part 1<\/a> and Part 2<\/a> of our trilogy). Somehow I learned that a major commemoration would be held in New York City on June 19, the same day they were killed. It was produced by the Rosenberg Fund for Children<\/a>, founded in 1990 by the Rosenbergs’ son Robert, who was grateful for the support he and his brother Michael had been shown during the jailing of, and after the killing of, their parents. The fund’s purpose is “to find and help children today who are enduring the same kind of nightmare he endured as a child.”<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I told Andrea we’d be going to New York “to see a concert” without saying more. The surprise was spoiled when my father blurted out “the Rosenbergs” on a telephone call when she’d mentioned she didn’t know the purpose for our trip. Immediately she went online and found the particulars.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2003
The poster for the event we attended features a design by Fernand L\u00e9ger, created for silk scarf pockets, apparently to commemorate the Fifth World Festival of Youth and Students for Peace and Friendship in Warsaw in 1955. \u2018\u2018Its primary function is, of course, to win converts to communism,\u201d the Christian Science Monitor wrote (\u2018\u2018State of the Nation; Behind the Curtain,\u201d 26 Aug 1955, 1). Peace and liberty were illusive, both in the U.S. and U.S.S.R., depending on who and where you were.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Nevertheless I made all the other plans without telling Andrea. And this week I found a file folder labeled NY \u2013 2003<\/em>. So what follows is a sort of How I Spent My Summer Vacation from sixteen years ago. It was a short trip\u2014three days and two nights\u2014but as usual I’ll go into quite a bit of detail dependent on what I remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Le Bernardin<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We took a red-eye from Long Beach to JFK, arriving early Thursday, the day of the event. We stayed where we had before with my parents, at the Roosevelt, on 45th between Madison and Park Avenues (less grand than it sounds). We’d paid for that “night” and slept the day away but somehow had the energy to buy me a coat because dinner had a dress code. During our walk we noticed a gallery we’d return to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dinner before the Rosenberg event was extravagant, at Le Bernardin, which I must have chosen for its vegetarian options. (It was Le Bernardin’s chef Eric Ripert who found his friend Anthony Bourdain’s body last year during one of their many culinary escapades.) My file contains notes from both our evening meals. We shared a mixed salad of bitter greens, teardrop tomatoes, mint, and blanched vegetables. Andrea had tuna tartare, a crab something or other, salmon with mushroom-truffle sauce, and an apricot sorbet gratin\u00e9e for dessert. (We’re both surprised at her appetite!) I had a baby Asian vegetable salad, a tomato tart with Japanese sprouts, two-mushroom ravioli, and a lemon-ginger creamy mousse with caramel filigree. Wine: a 2000 Tardieu-Laurent Hermitage red.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Program<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Rosenberg commemoration, held at City Center, was called Celebrate the Children of Resistance<\/em><\/a> and it had been performed before in 1997 and 2000 with variations. As the Fund for Children states in a report we picked up, the Rosenberg sons’ “childhood became a living nightmare.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their relatives were so frightened of being associated with “Communist spies” that they refused to take the boys into their homes. First they lived in a shelter. Later they lived with friends of their parents in New Jersey, but were thrown out of that state’s public school system after the local school board found out who they were. After their parents’ execution, the New York police seized the boys from the home of Abel and Anne Meeropol, their future adoptive parents. That time they were placed in an orphanage.<\/p>\n

Bad as this was, it could have been even worse. As Robert grew older, he came to realize the debt he owed to so many generous individuals whom he had never met, but who rallied to his support\u2014helping wage the legal battles to reunite him and his brother with the Meeropols, raising a trust fund that enabled them to attend schools and summer camps where progressive values were appreciated.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the 1975 event Andrea wrote about last time<\/a>, this presentation featured many celebrity supporters, including Susan Sarandon as MC. It was divided into three parts: The Past, The Present, and The Future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Past<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Ethel and Julius’s prison letters were read by Tovah Feldshuh and Peter Yarrow. A dramatization called Union Square, June 19, 1953<\/em> was performed by Harry Belafonte, Suheir Hammad, and Emillie Miller. The Meeropol brothers spoke of their memories. Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert provided music along with accompanist John Bucchino. Poet Mart\u00edn Espada read The Eleventh Reason<\/a>, based on Robert Meeropol’s remembrance, at age six, of “eleventh hour” appeals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Present<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Harry Belafonte read a message of support from Mumia Abu-Jamal, who we might tend to forget is the father of eight children. Janiece Thompson sang “Strange Fruit,” written by the Rosenberg sons’ adoptive father Abel Meeropol. Bill T. Jones performed an untitled dance solo (about which much more below<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Future<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The final section of the program led off with more music from Janiece Thompson and another poem by Mart\u00edn Espada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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