Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes. Well, she said exactly her story of her life as she told me, that she comes from a family of ex-Czarist officers. That her father had been a Czarist officer of some kind---you see what I mean? I don't remember whether it was navy or army. I don't recall it any more. That her mother remarried, and that her stepfather did not treat her well. That they moved--I think they lived in Leningrad when she was a child. That eventually they moved to Minsk. I don't remember what her father's profession was.
One thing I remember--that one of her uncles was a big shot Government official, something like that---colonel or something like that. That I remember she told me.
And then she went to this school of pharmacists, I think in Minsk, and graduated as a pharmacist. And one day she was walking by this river, which I also remember, in Minsk---the River Svisloch, which crosses the whole town, and where there are some new apartment buildings built, and in one of those apartment buildings there were very nice apartments, and that is where the foreigners lived.
She said it was her dream some day to live in an apartment like that. And that is where Lee Oswald lived. And eventually when they met---I remember they met at some dance I think he was ill, something like that, after that dance, and she came to take care of him. That is something I have a vague recollection of---that she took care of him, and from then on they fell in love and eventually got married. But she said it was the apartment house that was one of the greatest things she desired to live in, and she found out later on that Lee Oswald lived in that apartment house, and she finally achieved her dream.
It sounds ridiculous, but that is how in Soviet Russia they dream of apartments rather than of people.
She told us a tremendous amount of things which will come to me as things go on.

Mr. Jenner.

Go ahead.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Naturally I was talking to her and to him---I was trying to find out what is life of young people in Soviet Russia, what are the prices on food, what can you get for your money, what salary you get, what amusements you get.

Mr. Jenner.

Tell us what they said.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. The salaries--she was getting an equivalent of $60 a month. He was getting something like $80 a month. That almost all of it had to be spent on food. The lodging was very cheap, almost nothing, because it was provided by the Government. That the food was rather plentiful, you could get it--but it was rather monotonous. Sometimes you could not get meat. They used to have discussions between them all the time always they quarreled about--Lee Oswald and Marina always quarreled between themselves as to what actually were the prices, what actually were the conditions of life in Soviet Russia.

Mr. Jenner.

Tell me about the differences here.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.

Mr. Jenner.

The attitudes she had, and the attitude he had.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. He liked Russia more than she did. I think he liked the conditions in Russia more than she did.

Mr. Jenner.

Why?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Because he was a foreigner there, and he had a privileged position. He had a nice apartment. He said that people were interested in him, you see. That very often---he worked in a TV factory--the workers would come to him and ask him questions about the United States and so on, and that pleased him very much, because he was that type of an individual who needed attention.
Marina was more inclined to criticize the living conditions there than he did--- as far as I remember. Yet she was not too critical, you see. It was a livable way of life.
Actually, they came to think that possibly their life was better there than in Fort Worth. In other words, both were disappointed in what happened to them after they came back to the United States. And I think that Lee more than Marina. Because as the time went on, Marina was getting more and more

« Previous | Next »

Found a Typo?

Click here

Last Update: Wed, 3 Aug 2016 21:56:34 CET