On Doing Time - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Morton Sobell received his degree in engineering from City College of New York in 1938 and held jobs with the Navy Department and General Electric prior to his arrest in 1950. After spending a little more than 18 years in prison, he was released and returned to New York City in 1969. Shortly thereafter, he relocated to San Francisco, where he now lives with his wife Nancy.

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Kidnapped August 16, 1950. Mexico City, Mexico. In the morning, my wife Helen, daughter Sydney, son Mark, and I--Morton Sobell--went to a nearby park, where we took a leisurely stroll and sunned ourselves as though we had not a care in the world. We had been taking walks to the parks regularly ever since we had settled in our apartment on Cordoba. Mark had just learned to walk and we let him exercise his new-found skill. It felt good to watch him maintain his precarious balance as he plunged ahead without fear. Sydney, ten years old, always seemed to find new interests in the scene. The weather was exquisite--I had never before experienced the perfect climate that Mexico City had to offer.

The day would be an eventful one, but Helen and I were hardly prepared for what was in store for us. We had left New York at the end of June with our two children, and had flown down to Mexico City. Our departure was filled with ambiguity. We were afraid that with the beginning of the anti-Communist hysteria, Helen and I, having been Communist Party members some time earlier, were in for a rough time, and planned to sort things out while "vacationing." After renting an apartment in Mexico City and setting up house, we decided to return to the States, come what may. This decision was hastened by several missteps occasioned by cataclysmic events at home and abroad.

Two days after we left for Mexico, the Korean war broke out. Events moved swiftly during the next two months and our anxieties kept apace with the mounting repression back home.

Several weeks after we arrived here, while Helen and I were trying to figure out what to do, Julius Rosenberg, whom I had known since my City College days, was arrested for allegedly stealing the secret of the atom bomb and transmitting it to the Soviet Union. I was absolutely certain that Julius had had no connection with the atom bomb, and I couldn't conceive that he could possibly have been involved in any espionage. I panicked: I foresaw the FBI swooping down on everyone with a left-wing political past.