Ruth Greenglass

Jul 14 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

SHE was the wife of one of the key protagonists in the atomic spy wars that gripped the public in the 1950s, and sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair.

Yet Ruth Greenglass’s flinty and impassive face withheld the truth of her clinching evidence which led her sister-in-law Ethel to be electrocuted at Sing Sing prison, New York.

It was the recollection of Mrs Greenglass, who has died, aged 83, about who typed up secret information on the US atomic bomb project to be passed by her husband, David, to the Communist Julius Rosenberg, and onto his Soviet handlers, which would decide who, besides Julius, went to the electric chair.

A US Army sergeant and technician, David Greenglass worked on the Manhattan atomic bomb project and was the conduit to the Russians, desperate for scientific details. Likewise, Julius Rosenberg’s guilt was incontrovertible. The prosecution case against Ethel Rosenberg was feeble, and it was far more likely that Ruth Greenglass typed the information. David Greenglass also repeatedly asserted under questioning that his sister was innocent.

But in 1951, with the trial imminent and her husband yet to be sentenced, Mrs Greenglass suddenly recalled it was Ethel Rosenberg who had typed the notes, in 1945. Confronted with his wife’s account, Greenglass agreed she had a very good memory and was probably correct. This admission sent his sister to the electric chair with her husband.

The spy tracking began in Britain with the conviction of the physicist Klaus Fuchs, in 1950, who was part of a wider Communist spy ring that implicated Julius Rosenberg. Both Greenglasses were Young Communists members. In return for her co-operation,

Ruth Greenglass was not indicted and her husband received a 15-year sentence.

Later, her evidence’s veracity was increasingly questioned and Greenglass told a reporter: “I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I don’t remember.” Rosenberg’s former KGB handler said Ethel was innocent, but the Greenglasses refused to apologise to the Rosenbergs’ orphaned sons. Ruth Greenglass told her husband: “Look, we’re alive”.

After the trial, she lived in New York under an official alias to protect her identity. Her husband survives, and her death was only revealed by Federal consent to release secret grand jury testimony.

Ruth Greenglass, spy case witness; born, April 30/May1, 1924, died, April 7, 2008