Ethel Rosenberg was just 37 when she was electrocuted by the American Government for conspiracy to commit espionage following a 1951 trial which contained multiple miscarriages of justice.
The Government knew they had no conclusive evidence against Ethel who was a loyal wife, devoted mother and yes a communist but they thought charging her would make her husband talk. They insisted she was the leader simply because she was older than her husband. Since her death, leaving her two small sons orphaned,
there has been an outpouring of literature, plays, paintings, collages and even furniture. However, in the intervening 70 years since her death she has also become an American icon, a symbol of how fear and hysteria can make a government behave shamefully.
Sometimes it requires artists to make sense of this catastrophic historical failure of justice and mercy.
