Background
Ruth Leah Printz was born on April 30, 1924, in New York City to Max Printz and Tillie Leiter. She grew up in the same neighborhood, the Lower East Side, as her future husband, David Greenglass.
Ruth Leah Printz was born on April 30, 1924, in New York City to Max Printz and Tillie Leiter. She grew up in the same neighborhood, the Lower East Side, as her future husband, David Greenglass.
She graduated with honors from Seward Park High School at 16.
Although quite young, she and Greenglass wanted to marry before he was drafted to serve in World World War World War II They shared an interest in politics and together joined the Young Communist League. Julius Rosenberg became a Soviet agent working under Alexander Feklissov. In November 1944, she visited him in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he was working as a machinist on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos.
At the trial, Ruth Greenglass implicated Ethel in the espionage ring by testifying that Ethel Rosenberg had typed up the notes that David Greenglass had provided.
Her testimony was crucial in securing Ethel"s conviction. She died on April 7, 2008, at the age of 83, a fact that became widely known only when the government, numbering her among the deceased witnesses, released her grand jury testimony a few weeks later.
Her husband David survived her, dying in 2014, aged 92. The truth of her testimony at the Rosenberg trial has been questioned.
In September 2008, her grand jury transcripts were released and showed that when testifying before the grand jury in August 1950 Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn"t you write down on a piece of paper?" and replied "Yes, I wrote down a piece of paper and took it with him." At the trial she testified that Ethel Rosenberg typed up the notes about the atomic bomb.
Feklissov met the couple and on 21 September, he reported to Moscow: "They are young, intelligent, capable, and politically developed people, strongly believing in the cause of communism and wishing to do their best to help our country as much as possible.