Heir to an Execution

The director of this documentary is the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the two Jewish New Yorkers who were accused in 1950 of passing state secrets to the USSR and executed for treason three years later. Meeropol seeks to understand her grandparents’ story, largely using her eloquent, intelligent and calm father Michael – who was ten when his parents died – as a bridge to the past. There’s no awkward campaigning or suspect attempt at objectivity here, just a moving, smart and sensitive slice of personal and political history.