Five thousand demonstrators gathered in Union Square to offer prayers for the doomed couple. New York police went on citywide alert. Thousands more supporters assembled outside the White House. In Paris, 400 people were arrested in clashes outside the American Embassy.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's last hope for life had evaporated that morning, when President Dwight Eisenhower once again refused a plea for executive clemency. "By immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world," Eisenhower said, and that was the end of it.
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