![]() In addition, his wife Ruth, who participated in the conspiracy, was not prosecuted.ĭoctorow seems to have believed that truth would make for implausible fiction. After Greenglass was arrested, he cooperated with prosecutors and received a reduced sentence. The key witness against the Rosenbergs was Ethel’s younger brother, David Greenglass, who was stationed at Los Alamos and procured the atomic secrets that were passed along to the Soviet Union. While there are similarities between the Rosenbergs and the Isaacsons, there also are differences. (Though he was not the lead attorney, the infamous Roy Cohn helped prosecute the case perhaps he is the inspiration for the “assistant” skewered by Paul as an “ass licker” in a letter to his wife during the trial.) The Prosecution of the Isaacsons Illuminates the Case against the Rosenbergs The lead prosecutor in the novel is described by Paul Isaacson as an “arch assimilationist.” The judge, Paul learns, is a Jewish lawyer who “hopes to be appointed to the Supreme Court.” This description also applies to Judge Kaufman, who presided over the Rosenbergs trial and was known to be ambitious. Though Doctorow does not dwell on this point, he incorporates this aspect of the case into the narrative. ![]() Attorney Irving Saypol and Judge Kaufman motivated by a desire to establish that they were loyal Americans dedicated to combating Communism? To what extent, if any, were the actions of U.S. One of the most notable aspects of the Rosenbergs trial is that all the major players-the principal prosecutors, the defendants and their lawyers, and the judge-were Jewish. In The Book of Daniel, the Isaacsons have two young children, Daniel and his younger sister Susan. The Rosenbergs had two sons, Michael and Robert, who were ten and six years old, respectively, when their parents were executed. Like Julius and Ethel, Paul and Rochelle Isaacson were first-generation Jewish immigrants who came of age during the Great Depression and embraced Communism. There are obvious parallels between the Rosenbergs and the Isaacsons, the fictional couple in the novel. While events in the novel are driven by the anti-Communist zeal of the Cold War in the 1950s, protests against the Vietnam War also shape Daniel’s understanding of his parents. The Book of Daniel also is a political novel that explores the continuities and differences between the Old Left that became popular during the Great Depression and the New Left that emerged in the 1960s. Although Doctorow is writing a novel rather than history, he perceptively limns the issues raised by the trial. The author creates a family loosely based on the Rosenbergs-the Isaacsons-and tells their story through their now-adult son, Daniel, who is writing his Ph.D. It is an impressive work of historical fiction. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel, an extraordinary novel inspired by the case published a half century ago.ĭoctorow’s novel succeeds on two levels. If Sebba’s book has piqued your interest in the couple, then you absolutely should read E.L. Just this year, Anne Sebba’s biography of Ethel Rosenberg revived interest in the case. The Rosenbergs affair was a defining moment in the Cold War and still resonates today. Despite numerous legal appeals and a worldwide campaign for clemency, Rosenbergs were executed in 1953. Kaufman, sentenced the Rosenbergs to death. In the heat of the Cold War-the Korean War had begun the year before, in 1950-the judge who tried the case, Irving R. The United States charged the couple (and several other defendants) with passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Seventy years ago, the jury in a federal criminal trial convicted Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel of conspiracy to commit espionage.
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