American Communist Party member Ethel, who was sentenced to death in 1953, still shouted her innocence when she was tied to an electric shock chair!
(Source: Rule of Law Weekend "The Luxembourg Couple's Spy Case in the Cold War")
The Luxemburg espionage case can be said to be one of the biggest wrongful cases of the 20th century, when during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, the Soviet Union successfully developed nuclear weapons in 1949, breaking the nuclear monopoly of the United States.
Among those arrested were the Luxembourggers, whose husband, Julius, one of the main leaders of the American Communist Youth League, and his wife, Issel, a full-time housewife, were cooking for their two children at home on the day of their arrest, and the couple were accused of plotting to steal U.S. nuclear intelligence and leak it to the Soviet Union.
At first, Ethel explained to FBI staff that she had never been involved in any activities related to the Soviet Union, but her brother Davy insisted that Ethel had a close relationship with Soviet agents, and she also printed out documents related to nuclear intelligence and handed them over.
In the face of his brother's false accusations, Ethel directly denied his statement, Ethel explained that he and his husband were not scientific researchers, and it was impossible for them to have access to nuclear intelligence at all, how could there be a move by Thosso, but David said that the information was provided to Ethel by him, and hoped that Ethel could help transfer it to Soviet agents.
The FBI staff ignored Ethel's explanation, but took him directly to the prison, fearing that the couple would collude when they were held together, so they held him in different locations, seeing that he and her husband were in prison, Ethel was anxious because there were two children left unattended at home.
In order not to worry the children, the content of the letters written by Ethel and her husband was mostly a cheerful theme, considering that the children were too young to read the whole letter, the two specially asked their relatives to help read the whole letter to the children.
In prison, Ethel eagerly hoped that she could be released from prison and reunited with her children as soon as possible, and it was because of this belief that she survived the torture again and again, and she was unwilling to confess her guilt from beginning to end, and Ethel knew that once she confessed, she would never see her two lovely children again.
The American people expressed strong dissatisfaction with the government's purge, and they spontaneously organized demonstrations and protests, hoping that the government could restore the Luxembourg couple's innocence, and even Einstein stood up to speak out for the Luxembourg couple, but even so, the Luxembourggers were still sentenced to death.
Ethel had long been down-to-earth about her own life and death, and the only thing she could not worry about was her children, who had been accompanied by relatives to see their parents for the last time before the execution.
The Luxembourg couple didn't want their children to see their sad and weeping eyes, so they told the children with smiles that they must study hard and become useful people in society when they grow up.
Under normal circumstances, after Ethel sat in the electric chair, the staff only needed to press the button, and the current of 220V was enough to take her life, but Ethel survived 5 times before being determined to be completely dead.
After the death of the Luxembourgs, when McCarthyism was prevalent in the United States, no one dared to take in Ethel's two children, and they had to go to live in an orphanage, and later it was the composer Abel Miropel who went to the orphanage to adopt the two poor children.
When Ethel's two children grew up, they began to gather evidence to clear their parents' grievances, and they also set up a non-profit organization called the Rosenberg Children's Fund to adopt children from similar experiences.
It wasn't until after the collapse of the Soviet Union that the Luxembourgs were reaped, but it was clearly too late for them.
