Women of Controversy: Ethel Rosenberg

Womanica

Wonder Media Network and iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Education, History

4.3 • 920 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2024

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ethel Rosenberg (1915-1953) was an American citizen executed for alleged Soviet espionage during the Cold War. She and her husband, Julius, were convicted of couriering top-secret information about American technology, including nuclear weapon designs, to the Soviets. Their case was hotly debated and the source of intense controversy. Many believed that they were innocent victims of Cold War paranoia. Recently, decoded information was released pointing to Ethel’s innocence. For Further Reading: Declassified documents shed light on Ethel Rosenberg’s involvement in her husband’s Cold War spy case The Rosenbergs' Last Letter Execution of the Rosenbergs – archive, 1953

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before there was internet fraud and phone scams, there were always swindlers.
0:05.4	Female swindlers too.
0:07.4	Discover the stories of women from the past who not only survived, but thrived as con-artists and thieves.
0:16.6	How did they use their feminine characteristics to swindle in a world where men made the rules?
0:24.0	Join me, Lucy Worsley, historian and author, and my all-female team in ladies swindlers,
0:31.2	wherever you get your podcasts.
0:36.1	Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica. This month we're talking about women who found themselves at the center of controversy, whether deserved or not.
0:47.4	The Cold War was a painful and frightening time. American professors and artists were baselessly accused of being traitors to democracy.
0:55.8	Children were trained to duck and cover in the case of an atomic attack.
0:59.9	And a geopolitical struggle for power threatened the safety of people near and far.
1:04.8	It was easy to get caught in the crosshairs, like the woman we're talking about today.
1:10.0	Please meet Ethel Rosenberg. Ethel was born in
1:15.9	15 to a Jewish family in New York City. She showed an early aptitude for music and dreamt of a career
1:22.5	in the theater. After finishing high school, Ethel took a job as a secretary at the National New York Packing and Shipping Company.
1:30.3	The country was in the throes of the Great Depression, and Ethel was unhappy with the way she and her colleagues were treated.
1:37.3	So she got involved with labor politics at the office, helping organize her fellow workers at her company. Through her union and activism work,
1:47.1	Ethel met a young man named Julius. The two fell in love and soon they were married. They were in their
1:53.7	20s, idealistic and starting a new family. Ethel's involvement in the Communist Party has been
2:00.3	contested, but her husband, Julius,
2:02.6	was a proud member.
2:04.6	He worked as a civil engineer for the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and for the Russians, he was perfect.
2:11.6	Julius was at the right place at the right time to become entangled in Cold War dealings. Soviet spies approached Julius on Labor Day
	...

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