Strange Fruit By Billy Holli Day

By early 1952, Bubbie’s health and energy was declining and the Rosenbergs asked Emanuel Bloch to find a new home for the boys. In July 1952 the boys were temporarily placed with Ben and Sonia Bach, friends of the Rosenbergs. The Bachs had two children; Maxine, a teen-ager attending college, and Leo, who was Robbie’s age. During this period, Robbie developed a simple set of survival rules: don’t attract attention, put yourself in other’s shoes and be nice to people and make them laugh.
Three days before the June 18, 1953 execution date, Michael copied a letter composed by a family friend and the boys flew to Washington, D.C. to deliver the letter to President Eisenhower. In the letter Michael pleaded “please don’t leave my brother and
me without a mommy and daddy…”. Michael remembered the day as exciting, with many reporters and photographers pressed close; for Robbie the experience was frightening because of the crowds.
Emmanuel Bloch took the boys to Sing Sing Prison on June 16, 1953 for a final visit with their parents. Michael felt that his parents were not taking their pending execution seriously because they maintained composure while he was emotionally crumbling. At one point he cried out “One more day to live, one more day to live”. With Michael’s letter in Eisenhower’s hand for response and an international outcry for clemency, a final temporary stay of one day was granted by the Supreme Court.
On June 19th, Michael recalled the day as one long stretch of being told to go outside to play and then being allowed to watch the events of his parent’s upcoming execution play out on television. (M. a. Meeropol, Heir to an Execution 2004) Lawyers feverishly attempted to persuade judges to grant another stay. Emmanuel Bloch appeared at the White House gates and was turned away after leaving a last plea for clemency addressed to President Eisenhower.
At dusk Michael came in the house and asked the grownups what had happened. A family friend replied “We listened to every station; they all said the same thing”. Michael remembered not crying, not feeling anything. Robbie recalled Michael being beside himself with grief as adults tried to comfort him. Seven-year-old Robbie didn’t realize that both of his parents were dead.
Emmanuel Bloch now focused his energy on finding a permanent home for the boys and the Bachs introduced him to a couple named Abel and Anne Meeropol. The Meeropols had never met the Rosenbergs but had closely followed their trial, which they believed to be anti-Semitic, anti-Communist and inhuman. Abel Meeropol had served as a pallbearer at the Rosenberg’s funeral. The Meeropols extended an offer to Emmanuel Bloch to adopt the boys, which was readily accepted. After an abrupt goodbye to the Bachs, with whom they had been temporarily living for the past eighteen months, they also told Bubbie good bye and went home with the Meeropols in December 1953.

Anne and Abel Meeropol were public school teachers in New York City. Abel used teaching but used it as a stepping-stone until he could full-time work as a song writer and lyricist. He had a strong sense of social justice and hated political witch hunts. He had found an early outlet for his beliefs as a member of the Communist Party in the early 1930’s, during the Depression. Abel was secretive about his membership in the party and none of his personal effects, donated to Boston University following his death, referenced his membership. Using the pen name Lewis Allan, he kept his writing, which dealt with strong left-leaning political ideas, separate from his career as a school teacher.
In the late 1930’s the federal government recruited artists to generate patriotism in America.
Abel wrote several patriotic songs during that time, including the lyrics to “Put the Heat on Hitler” and “Heil with a Smile”. He hated Hitler because of the Fuhrer’s Jewish persecutions and he drew similarities between the mistreatment of German Jews and the mistreatment of Blacks in America. His hatred of racism in America prompted him to write the song “Strange Fruit”, popularized by Billy Holliday. The song dealt with Southern Black lynching, using tormented images and stinging lyrics to impress its message. Abel said that he wrote the song “because he hated lynching and he hated the people who perpetuated the act”. Both Abel and Anne engaged in political activism throughout their lives.
The Meeropols lived in uptown Manhattan, near Harlem, in a small apartment. The boys shared the apartment’s single bedroom and Anne and Abel slept on a sofa-bed in the living room. In early January, 1954 Emmanuel Bloch visited the boys and was delighted with how happy the boys were, living with Anne and Abel. Within a week of his visit Bloch, at age fifty-two, died of heart failure on January 30,
1954.
Legal papers were filed to adopt the boys and their adoption was finalized in February 1957. Several steps were taken to help the boys adjust to their new life including a name change to Meeropol, enrollment in a new school and avoidance of all publicity. Michael and Robbie believed their adoption by the Meeropols to be a significant early victory in their lives.
Life with the Meeropols was a positive, permanent change for the boys. Their home was filled with laughter, love and frequent affection. The family took yearly road trips and in the summer the boys went to camp. People around the world who saw the Rosenberg trial and execution as unjust sent the boys birthday cards and notes of support throughout their childhood. (Baker, page 42).
Michael and Robbie continued to see Bubbie as she descended into senility. Initially, the boys attended family gatherings for their father’s side of the family but as the years went by, those family ties lessened. They did not see anyone on their mother’s side of the family. The Meeropols gathered them into their warm family fold and they formed long-term relationships with their new cousins. Robbie, as an adult, wrote that the Meeropols adopting the sons of Communists who were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage during the McCarthy era was a very brave act. He believed that he would not have survived to become a high-functioning adult if the Meeropols had not taken him and Michael into their home.
By 1955, anti-Communist feelings were beginning to diminish in America. The boys knew at some level that the recent Red Scare era had been instrumental in their parent’s imprisonment and deaths but still didn’t understand the full details. In the fall of 1956, when Michael was twelve and Robbie was eight, the Meeropols enrolled them in a politically-liberal private school in Manhattan. The school, called the Little Red School House for elementary students and Elisabeth Irwin High School for upper grades taught a progressive left-leaning curriculum.
Robbie had developed a budding interest in politics and political debate – an interest not shared by his classmates. His first peace march was in 1958 to protest the atom bomb in a Ban-the-Bomb movement. He also picketed Woolworth’s five-and-dime store in Harlem because of the chain’s discrimination against Blacks in the South. The Meeropol’s sense of justice for all was developing in Robbie’s mind and heart.
Early 1958 brought Abel Meeropol a close call with investigators from the House of Un-American Activities, while the committee was in town investigating Communist activities. After a suspicious phone call to the house and an unanswered knock on the door one night to deliver a subpoena, Abel moved the boys to a friend’s house near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. They temporarily assumed the name Pearlman at school. After several weeks the HUAC investigators left town and the family moved back home. This incident temporarily jarred the boys’ sense of security and reminded them of the power of the Federal Government.
The boys entered the Elisabeth Irwin school in the Fall, Robbie in the seventh grade and Michael in tenth grade. Robbie struggled in middle school while Michael excelled academically and socially in high school. He was elected class president in his senior year and enjoyed a close circle of friends. At the same time, Robbie had few friends and gravitated toward boys who shared his left-leaning political beliefs.
Robbie’s social life improved as he entered eighth grade. One day, his class visited W.E.B. DuBois at his home in Brooklyn. Sitting in DuBois’ home and listening to his gentle wisdom kindled a fire of injustice in Robbie, as he learned of the hate and racism that had been inflicted on DuBois.
The Meeropols bought their first home in 1961 and moved, with Robbie, to Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.
Michael was now away at Swarthmore College. Changing schools was difficult for Robbie as his new neighborhood was not as liberal in their social and political views. He again struggled socially in school and spent much of his ninth grade year with his parents, discussing politics as he continued to differentiate his view of politics from his parents. In his junior year he joined the political group Students for Peace and Civil Rights, participated in several anti-war marches with his classmates and became friends with a boy whose parents were active Communists.
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Meanwhile, Michael enjoyed college life and, influenced by his adviser, an economics professor, decided to major in economics. In his senior year, he was accepted to Cambridge University for graduate studies. He was politically active in college, joining Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a radical leftist college organization. He also participated in political marches and traveled to Washington to sit in on Supreme Court arguments. On one occasion, there before him sat two justices, Hugo Black and William Douglas, who had voted to accept the Rosenberg death case, alongside Tom Clark, one of the justices who turned the case down.
Both Michael and Robbie believed in their parent’s innocence throughout childhood. The Meeropols told them that the Rosenbergs were innocent and they heard this idea expressed by family and friends. Robbie was surprised that the Rosenberg case wasn’t taught in his high school history class. He later learned that his history teacher, Mrs. Lloyd, knew his identity and purposely made sure that the Rosenbergs weren’t discussed. As he approached college he struggled with how he would handle confrontations with peers about his Rosenberg parentage. He felt it was only a matter of time before his secret became public as books about the Rosenbergs were still being written.

In 1965, the book Invitation to an Inquest, about the Rosenberg trial, was published. Robbie met the authors, Walter and Miriam Schneir, and for the first time learned that his parents had been convicted not of spying but for conspiracy to commit espionage. The prosecutor had charged that the Rosenbergs stole the ‘secret’ to the atom bomb and had passed this information to the Russians. In their book the Schneirs’ wrote that there was no single secret to the atom bomb. Any country determined to build the bomb could have done so, given the correct resources.

Robbie arrived at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana in the fall of 1965. Earlham was a liberal arts college founded and run by Quakers. Within a week of his arrival, Robbie and his roommate had formed an on-campus group opposed to the Vietnam War and he joined the group Students for a Democratic Society. Later in the fall he traveled to Washington, D.C. to participate in a large anti-war rally. In his sophomore year Robbie wrote a column for the school paper that attacked school policies and the passive behavior of other students. The college’s president called Robbie in to his office where he explained that Earlham may not be the best school for him. This conversation was a bit late as Robbie had already decided to transfer to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor for his junior year.

Upon arriving at the University of Michigan he immediately joined the SDS chapter. Robbie was slow to make friends in Ann Arbor but began dating a classmate, Ellie. They soon moved in together in an off-campus apartment and Robbie realized he would need to tell Ellie his Rosenberg secret. Unknown to him, a mutual friend had already told Ellie he was a Rosenberg son. Robbie worked up the courage to tell Ellie when he decided to propose to her. His announcement was a relief to them both as Ellie knew he had been very anxious but didn’t know why. They married in 1968 when Robbie and Ellie were twenty. They continued to participate in political protests in Ann Arbor and were arrested at a sit-in to protest a cut in the city’s winter clothing budget for poor families.

They remained in Ann Arbor following graduation as Robbie had received a grant to pursue graduate work in anthropology. In the fall, Robbie received a second grant to study the population of a village in Catalonia, Spain. While living in the small village he and Ellie examined their values and decided that the forms of protest they had been using back in Ann Arbor were ineffective and not achieving change. Upon their return to the U.S. Robbie finished his master’s program and began focusing on his dissertation research. In 1971, they moved back East, settling in Springfield, Massachusetts near Michael, who was now teaching economics at Western New England College.

In April 1973, Louis Nizer, a trial lawyer, wrote a book about the Rosenberg trial and went on a promotion blitz around the country. Michael and Robbie had lived in near-total anonymity since childhood but Nizer was now forcing their hand.