History and Culture

Revisiting “the Crime of the Century”

March 6, 2025

by Gemma Birnbaum

On March 6, 1951, the espionage trial of Julius Rosenberg, his wife Ethel Rosenberg, and engineer Morton Sobell commenced. Their arrests nearly one year prior had garnered international attention, and media attention grew when the grand jury passed down the indictments in the summer of 1950. The trio would be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, accused of passing nuclear secrets and other arms intelligence to the Soviet Union. Judge Irving Robert Kaufman presided over the trial, and handed down the sentence: the Rosenbergs would die by execution.

Last season on The Wreckage: Year Zero, listeners learned from Jonathan Brent, CEO of the YIVO Institute, about the Venona Project, the counterintelligence operation that brought suspicion on the Rosenbergs and other Americans, including senior Treasury Department official Harry Dexter White. Revisit the episode on our website.

This week, AJHS’s podcast, The Wreckage: American Subversives, takes a look back at one of the most infamous trials in American history. Learn more about the Rosenberg/Sobell trial, the sentencing, and the aftermath from host Rebecca Naomi Jones and guest expert Martin J. Siegel, author of Judgment and Mercy: The Turbulent Life and Times of the Judge Who Condemned the Rosenbergs. Listen and subscribe here.

Gemma Birnbaum

Originally from Queens, NY, Gemma Birnbaum holds a bachelor’s in history and Judaic Studies from New York University and a master’s degree in the History of Twentieth Century Labor and Civil Rights from Tulane University. Currently the Executive Director of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City, she previously spent 10 years at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans where she oversaw education and distance learning, media production, and interpretation, as well as serving as creator and executive producer of the podcast “To the Best of My Ability.” Prior to her time at the Museum, Gemma worked as an experiential educator at Heifer International and was a Lipper Intern at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, where she first got her start in museums and archives.