Excerpt from Book
Chapter One I WAS SIX YEARS, ONE MONTH, AND ONE DAY OLD ON MONDAY, JUNE 15, 1953-four days before my parents' execution. That hot June my ten-year-old brother, Michael, and I were living with friends of my parents, Ben and Sonia Bach, in Toms River, New Jersey. I was a thin, dark-haired, olive-skinned child of average height. My face tapered from a high forehead to a somewhat pointed chin. I'm told my most striking feature was brown eyes that were so deep set they often appeared ringed like a raccoon's. I was finishing my kindergarten year at Toms River Elementary School. That summer I played a lot of ball with my brother and several older neighborhood kids in the Bachs' front yard. I was fairly well coordinated: quick with my hands but not particularly nimble on my feet. Better at athletics than most but always not as good as some. It helped having a big brother who looked out for me. I played a lot of Monopoly while I lived in New Jersey. By the time I was five I loved to play endless games with my brother and any other competitors I could find. Even though my opponents were almost always older, I held my own. I quickly learned that, with the exception of the Utilities, it was smartest to buy every property you landed on to maximize your chances of getting a "monopoly." This rapidly used up your meager initial allotment of fifteen hundred dollars. There was even a slim chance you'd quickly go bankrupt and be out of the game if you followed this strategy. It was much more likely that you'd prevent others from getting a monopoly, secure one of your own, and eventually win. Of course, if the dice weren't with you there was nothing you could do. Since my brother played similarly, winning our games had more to do with luck than skill. But my peers had favorite properties and would decline to purchase ones they disdained. They often appeared to be winning because they had more money than I did early in the game. But with more properties I usually acquired the first monopoly and ultimately drove my opponents out of the game. This was quite a life lesson for the child of Communists. My attitude toward Monopoly reflected my survival strategy. I usually had a plan. Adults found me quiet and withdrawn, although I was very quick to climb into the lap of any adult woman I felt the slightest bit comfortable with. I sought shelter whenever I could. Fuss and commotion usually meant that bad things were happening, and I kept quiet to insulate myself from the tumult and to avoid creating more uproar. I was quietly observing, and my observations inevitably led to strategy. I endured my parents' absence, bided my time, and planned cautiously while cradling hope of winning even when the odds appeared long. Although at six I was too young to comprehend the world beyond the Bachs' house, my neighborhood, and school, I knew that there was something dangerous "out there," lurking near enough to strike again, that was somehow involved in taking my parents away. A dark cloud of generalized anxiety hovered at the edge of my consciousness-a sense that something about my family was terribly wrong and that my circumstances might get even worse. Most of the time, when I ignored or forgot about the upheavals of my life, I felt reasonably safe with the Bachs, and not too bad. But "we" (whoever that was) were under attack from whatever was out there, and I wanted to keep a low profile, beneath the notice of any enemies. I felt particularly vulnerable whenever I left the Bachs' home or protection. I was anxious taking the school bus to kindergarten. I remember another small, dark bus rider who, unlike me, had a nervous tic and stuttered. Some of the other kids teased him. Once his mother, a Holocaust survivor with a strong Yiddish accent, got on the bus and screamed at the driver that the teasing made her son more nervous. I observed that her yelling did not help. My mortification for this other boy confiMain Description
Robert Meeropol was six years old in 1953 when his parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed after being convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union at the height of the McCarthy era. Just before they were put to death, the Rosenbergs wrote a letter to their two sons saying they were “secure in the knowledge that others would carry on after them.” The Rosenbergs left their young sons a legacy that was both a burden and a gift, as well as an aching emotional void. Robert Meeropol grew up torn between the need to pursue his political values and his intense fear that personal exposure might subject him and his family to violence or even death. An Execution in the Family details Robert Meeropol’s political odyssey from being the Rosenbergs’son to becoming a prominent political activist in his own right, and it chronicles a very personal journey of self-discovery. This is the story of how he tried to balance a strong desire to live a normal life and raise a family with a growing need to create something useful out of his childhood nightmare. It is also a poignant account of how, at age forty-three, he finally found a way to honor his parents and be true to himself.Publisher Fact Sheet
One of the sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg recounts the painful legacy left to him by his parents.