Michael Meeropol

Michael Meeropol (born Michael Rosenberg on March 10, 1943) is an American retired professor of economics. He is the older son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted communist spies. Born in New York City, as Michael Rosenberg, Meeropol spent his early childhood living in New York and attending local school there. His father Julius, an electrical engineer, and his mother Ethel (née Greenglass), a union organizer, were members of the Communist Party USA. When Michael was seven years old, his parents were apprehended. In 1951, they were convicted and sentenced to death for conspiracy to commit espionage related to the passing of atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. After two years, during which they both maintained their innocence, and a worldwide campaign for executive clemency raged, they were executed in June 1953. Early years During the trial, Michael and his younger brother Robert lived first with their maternal grandmother, Tessie Greenglass, until November 1950, when she placed them in the Hebrew Children's Home in the Bronx. In June 1951, they moved in with their paternal grandmother, Sophie Rosenberg, in upper Manhattan until June 1952, at which time they were taken in by family friends, Ben and Sonia Bach, in Toms River, New Jersey, from June 1952 until the December after their parents' executions on June 19, 1953. The Toms River school superintendent "turned the boys away as non-residents".<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913052-1,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121022175508/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913052-1,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=October 22, 2012 |first=R.Z. |last=Sheppard |series=Books |title=Generation on trial? review of We Are Your Sons' |magazine=Time Magazine |date=May 5, 1975}}</ref> Later family life and education The brothers were eventually adopted by the lyricist, librettist, and musician Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne, whose first children had been stillborn. Taking their last name, Michael and Robert grew up first in Manhattan and then (after 1961) in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.