The Rosenbergs | The Martyrs

On the morning of March 6, 1951, U.S. Attorney Irving Saypol stood before a packed courtroom in Manhattan’s Foley Square Courthouse to open the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their associate Morton Sobell. The three were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage—specifically, passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. If convicted, they faced up to 30 years in prison or death. Saypol, already famous as the country’s top legal hunter of communists, knew the stakes were high. The Cold War was escalating, and the government had made rooting out spies a priority. Anything less than a conviction would be a damaging embarrassment.

Saypol’s opening statement set the tone. He told the jury that the evidence would show the defendants’ “loyalty and allegiance were not to the United States, but to communism.” Defense lawyer Manny Bloch objected, arguing that communism was not on trial and that being a communist was not a crime. Judge Irving Kaufman sustained the objection, but Saypol simply rephrased his point without using the word “communism.” He had already accomplished his goal: branding the defendants as ideologically driven traitors in the minds of the jury and the public.

The Trial and the Testimony