Mr. JENNER. What is his first name?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Basil.
Mr. JENNER. He lives in Connecticut now?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. He is a wealthy man?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Relatively wealthy man, well-to-do. He has had
many, many, many years--many more than all of us, in the oil business.
Mr. JENNER. Never part of the community?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. We all knew him. Because there are so few people
in this geological field. And he is an old acquaintance of mine.
Mr. JENNER. Now, there was a Professor Jitkoff in Houston?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. What is his first name?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. I don't remember. I just met him once or twice. I
know his wife better.
Mr. JENNER. Is his wife also a Russian emigre?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. I think she is of Armenian, or Russian and
Armenian, extraction.
Mr. JENNER. In what connection did you meet him?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Already a long time ago. Oh, yes; I met him
through another Russian, through ballerina, a Russian ballerina,
another one who lived there--Natasha Krosofska, a famous ballerina.
Mr. JENNER. I am thinking of another name in Dallas, Mrs. Helen Leslie.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; that is her stepmother--the stepmother of
the ballerina.
Mr. JENNER. She was part of the Russian group?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; also from a typical old guard family--really
hundred percent. To show you the atmosphere--who does not believe there
are any new houses built in Russia today? She said in her opinion the
Russia of today doesn't have any new houses, none whatsoever--only the
old palaces from the czarist days.
Mr. JENNER. I interrupted you.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. The really backward type old guard people. I am
glad that you made such a distinction there.
Mr. JENNER. Is this old guard group a group that would be inclined to
believe that if an American went to Russia and came back with a Russian
wife, that that necessarily would mean that he must have had some
connections of some kind with the Communists in order to get a Russian
wife out of Russia?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. That is an interesting question. They might
believe anything, because they think that the Russians are such devils
that they would go to any extent of diabolical combinations to do
something like that.
Mr. JENNER. Now, among the Russian emigre group in Dallas, did you ever
know of anybody that you even thought might be a Communist?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Not a single one.
Mr. JENNER. Or have any leanings toward communism?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. No; no leanings even. I am probably the most
leftest of them all.