Obituary: Ruth Greenglass

Ruth Greenglass, who has died aged 84, provided crucial evidence in a notorious espionage trial that led to the execution of her sister-in-law, Ethel Rosenberg, in 1953; her testimony, and the conviction, was later called into question.

During the Second World War Ruth's husband, David Greenglass, had worked as a machinist on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

He was said by prosecutors at the trial to have been persuaded by his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, and her husband Julius, to give them top-secret data relating to atomic weapons, which Julius then transmitted to Moscow. Both couples were avowed Communists.

Following a tip-off by a Soviet defector, in 1950 Klaus Fuchs, head of the physics department of the British nuclear research centre at Harwell, was arrested and charged with espionage.

Fuchs confessed that he had been passing information to the Soviet Union since the Manhattan Project. It was clear that he had not worked alone and, during subsequent investigations by the FBI, suspicion fell on David Greenglass.

Greenglass was called in for interrogation and confessed. He claimed that the Rosenbergs had also been members of the spy ring and agreed to testify against them. It was important for the prosecution that Ethel Rosenberg should be implicated as it was thought that her husband might be persuaded to spill the beans if he felt he might spare her execution.

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