Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Anyway, we escaped from the famine, frankly,
more than communism, and moved back to Minsk--whether we had a house,
or I don't remember, but we had some possessions there. And we arrived
there. And from then on we stayed there, although the Communists
eventually occupied Minsk. Then my father was put in jail. I will make
it short.
Mr. JENNER. Please--that is all right. I don't mind the shortness. But
I want times. About when was your father put in jail?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. The first time in 1920, I think.
Mr. JENNER. And you were still with your family then?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. At this time you were 9 years old.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Your mother was still alive?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Your father was seized?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. By whom?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. By the Communists, by the Communist regime.
Mr. JENNER. Why was he seized?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. For being outspoken, I guess. I remember--the
first time I don't remember, frankly. But the second time I remember
very well, because this is very interesting. He was seized the first
time. Then the Polish Army arrived--the Poles and the Russians were
fighting at the time. And at the last moment the Communists released
my father, because of the intervention of some friend, you see. And we
always had some friends whom we had protected once upon a time, who
always came and helped him at the right moment with the Communists,
because many Jewish people he had helped became Communists, or halfway
Communists. They helped him. And that is how eventually we were able to
escape from Soviet Russia.
The first time he was released, the Poles arrived, we were in Poland
again, that was a temporary occupation. And then the Poles retreated
and the Russians arrived again. And here was the question to decide
whether we should go with the Poles or stay in Russia. And my father
decided to stay in Russia because being a liberal he had an impression
that they have changed.
Mr. JENNER. That the Russians had changed?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; he heard from somebody that they have
become liberal. He stayed in Minsk, and because he stayed he got some
kind of an appointment in the Soviet Government. I don't remember
which one it was. I guess in the Department of Agriculture, because
he was interested in division of big estates. That was his idea--what
was going on in Russia was opposed by the huge estates. We had one,
also, but not as big. So he was always in favor of the division of
the big estates, breaking them up into smaller farms. And he had this
appointment, adviser to the Minister of Agriculture--I don't remember
what it was exactly. And we lived more or less happily for a certain
number of months--although there was a famine there.
Mr. JENNER. Now, you are still in Minsk?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Still in Minsk; yes--in probably 1920. And then
one day they arrested him again. And here is what happened. I will show
you what kind of a person he was. At the time they were installing
museums in churches. And my father objected to that.
Mr. JENNER. Your father was a religious man, was he?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. No; he was not religious. But he objected by
principle to that. He was not very religious at all. But he objected
to the intervention into other people's faith. We never had too
much religion in the family. And he was put in jail. And started
criticizing the Soviet Government. And, finally--I remember this more
distinctly--because he was finally sentenced to life exile to Siberia.
And that I will never forget about my father--an interesting thing.
Mr. JENNER. He was banished to Siberia by the Russians?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. These are the Bolsheviks who had conducted the revolution.
This was a revolutionary period?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. That is right. This is 1921 by now.
Mr. JENNER. You are now 10 years old?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. I remained on the street making my own living
somehow. My mother runs around the country trying to save my father. He
is in jail for the second time, and finally he gets sentenced to life
imprisonment in a town called Vieliki Ustug in Siberia. This is as far
as I remember the name of it.
And why was he sentenced for that--because at the hearing, whatever
they called the court, they asked him, "What kind of government
do you suggest for Soviet Russia?" And he said, fool as he was,
"Constitutional monarchy," and that was it. That was his sentence--just
because of that. Because, actually, they didn't have anything against
him. My father was a liberal and never hurt anybody. He became very
sick in jail. And these friends--the friends whom he had helped
previously----
Mr. JENNER. You mean true friends?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. That is right. In this particular case I don't
remember their names. They were a couple of Jewish doctors who advised
my father to eat as little as possible, any way to appear very sick,
and finally--they themselves were his doctors. They finally made the
position with the Soviet Government that he was going to die, he was
not going to survive the trip to Siberia, because he was going to be
sent directly to Siberia, with the family, with all of us. And that
he should be released to stay home, and just appear once--a couple of
times a week to show he is there, until his health condition improved,
and he was able to be sent to Siberia.
And they did that, surprisingly, and they released him. And that is
where he made his preparations for escape. And the same people, helped
him to get some transportation, a hay wagon, and we crossed the border,
in a very long and tedious way. But we crossed the border of Poland.
Mr. JENNER. You crossed the border into Poland, and he settled where?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. In a town called Wilno.
Mr. JENNER. That was yourself, your mother, and your father?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. My father. But my mother almost immediately died
from typhoid fever which she contracted during this escape. We all had
this typhoid fever.
Mr. JENNER. But she succumbed to it?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. And this was what year?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. 1922.
Mr. JENNER. You are now 11 years old.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. At this point I might ask you--the name was Von
Mohrenschildt at this particular time?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Your name is now De Mohrenschildt.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. I think your brother still uses the Von, does he not?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Would you explain that?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes--because I am more or less of a French
orientation. And when I became an American citizen, I did not like
the prefix "Von" which is German to the average person. And so we
used "De" which is equally used in Sweden or in the Baltic States,
interchangeably. And my uncle, who was here in the States for quite
some time, and died here----
Mr. JENNER. I was going to ask you about him. You might as well give
his full name.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Ferdinand De Mohrenschildt.
Mr. JENNER. I will digress for a moment. Ferdinand De Mohrenschildt
was some officer, or had a connection with the Russian Embassy here in
Washington?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Tell us about that, please.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, he was First Secretary of the Czarist
Embassy, the last Czarist Embassy here in Washington. He married
McAdoo's daughter.
Mr. JENNER. William Gibbs McAdoo's daughter. She is now Mrs. Post.
Is she still alive?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; she is still alive.
Mr. JENNER. Do you recall her first name?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Nona.
Mr. JENNER. Your uncle is deceased?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. He is deceased; yes.
Mr. JENNER. They were eventually divorced, were they not?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes, sir; no--he died. They were never divorced.
She was divorced many times--remarried and divorced many times. But he
died--I guess in 1925 or 1924.
Mr. JENNER. Sometimes people refer to you as Baron De Mohrenschildt.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Would you explain that?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. I don't refer to myself as that, you know. But
supposedly the family has the right to it, because we are members of
the Baltic nobility.
Mr. JENNER. Through what source?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Through the Swedish source, from the time of
Queen Christina. But my father never used the title, because of his
perhaps liberal tendencies. Neither did Ferdinand, I think.
Mr. JENNER. And as near as I can tell, your brother never has?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. My brother--I don't think so; no.
Mr. JENNER. At least I don't find it in any of the papers.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You are an interesting person, Mr. De Mohrenschildt, to
many people. They have gathered ideas about you, and many of them in
the past at least have felt that you might have been, or that you
perhaps were--had a title of some kind. I just wanted to explain that
of record.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Now, we have you in Wilno, Poland. You are 11 years old.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. I have some papers which say that we are barons,
in my files. But, frankly, I don't--I think it is sort of ridiculous to
use the title. My ex-wife loved the idea.
Mr. JENNER. Which one?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. The very last one, Sharples.
Mr. JENNER. Am I correct that there were two children, yourself and
your brother Dimitri?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. And no others--just two children?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Now, you stayed in Wilno, Poland, how long?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Stayed in Wilno until I graduated from gymnasium,
which is the equivalent of high school. A little bit more than a high
school. That must have been 1929. Not constantly over there, but that
is where our home was.
Mr. JENNER. What did your father do in Wilno?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. In Wilno he fought for the--tried to regain back
our estate. It happened to be we had an estate, a piece of land.
Mr. JENNER. In Russia?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. In Russia--which became Poland--in Czarist
Russia, but which became Poland. Right on the border. It became through
the partition of Czarist Russia, it became part of Poland. And this
estate was in Poliesie. That is a wooded area of Poland, right on the
border.
Well, the estate was seized by the peasants and divided among
themselves by themselves. It was not large, but it was--well, maybe
5,000 acres; 5,000 or 6,000 acres.
Mr. JENNER. I would say that is fairly large.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. My father was able to regain it. He did not take
it back from the peasants, but he regained ownership and was able to
sell the forests from it, and eventually sold it back again to the
peasants piece by piece. So we were not completely penniless refugees.
Mr. JENNER. Did your mother have an interest in that estate?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes, it was mother's and father's estate,
probably jointly.
Mr. JENNER. All right.
Now, you completed your classical intermediate education, as you call
the gymnasium, in 1929.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. So you are now 18 years sf age?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Your mother is deceased. Did you live with your father
during this period?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.