Mr. McKENZIE. I would prefer, Mr. Rankin, for the purposes of the
record so that the record will be complete, to have a correct English
translation of Mrs. Oswald's letter in the record in lieu of Commission
Exhibit No. 988.
Mr. RANKIN. Mr. Chairman, if it is agreeable to the Commission, I would
like to ask counsel to furnish such a translation and we will then make
it the next number, Exhibit No. 992, as a part of this record.
Mr. DULLES. That shall be admitted then as Exhibit No. 992, the other
already being in the record I think, probably has to stay there
particularly in view of all this discussion of it.
Mr. RANKIN. If you will furnish it.
Mr. McKENZIE. You are putting the onus or burden back on me, Mr.
Rankin, when the Commission has a fully qualified, I presume, Russian
interpreter here, and if the Commission would not mind going to the
further expense of having the interpretation of the letter made, I
think it would expedite the Commission's report.
Mr. RANKIN. If it is satisfactory to Mr. McKenzie, then, Mr. Chairman,
I would like to ask Mr. Coulter if he would make a translation and
submit it to Mr. McKenzie for submission to his client for approval,
and then we will have that marked the Exhibit No. 992 and made part of
this record.
Mr. DULLES. Excellent, that will be admitted as such, Commission
Exhibit No. 992.
Mr. McKENZIE. Thank you, Mr. Rankin and thank you Mr. Chairman.
(Commission Exhibit No. 992 was marked for identification and received
in evidence.)
Mr. RANKIN. Mrs. Oswald, will you examine the cameras of your husband
and tell us which one took the pictures that showed your husband with
the rifle and the pistol, as you will recall?
The pictures I am asking you about are Exhibits Nos. 133-A and 133-B
which you recall are the ones that you said in your prior testimony you
took yourself.
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.
Mr. RANKIN. With one of these cameras.
Mrs. OSWALD. This is the first and last time in my life I ever took a
photograph and it was done with this gray camera.
Mr. REDLICH. Mr. Rankin, the Commission exhibit numbers of the two
cameras, one is Commission Exhibit No. 136 and one is Commission
Exhibit No. 750.
Mr. McKENZIE. And the gray camera she is referring to, Mr. Rankin, for
the purpose of the record is Commission Exhibit No. 750, isn't that
right, Mrs. Oswald?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.
Mr. RANKIN. That is the gray camera you just said you took pictures
with, is that correct?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes. The other camera also belonged to Lee but I don't use
it.
Mr. RANKIN. Turning to another subject now, Mrs. Oswald, while you and
Lee Harvey Oswald were at Minsk in the Soviet Union, can you tell us
how Lee Harvey Oswald spent his leisure time while he was there?
Mrs. OSWALD. I don't know how he spent his time before we were married
but afterwards he was a great lover of classical music and used to go
to concerts a lot, and theaters, and movies, symphony concerts, and we
used to go out on the lakes around Minsk. There are some lakes in the
confines of Minsk and outside where we used to go.
Mr. RANKIN. While there did he read much?
Mrs. OSWALD. He didn't read very much because there wasn't a very great
choice of books in English except the ones on Marxism.
Mr. DULLES. He could, however, read books in Russian, could he not, at
this time?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes; but it was a lot of work for him and he really didn't
enjoy it very much. But he did go to Russian films and understood them.
Mr. RANKIN. Did he go to the rifle club there?
Mrs. OSWALD. He belonged to a hunters--a club of hunters and had a
rifle but he never went to the practice meetings of this club. He only
paid his membership dues, and I think that he joined this club in order
to be able to acquire a rifle because only apparently members of such
hunting clubs have the right in the Soviet Union to own a rifle. Only
once did he go out with a group of some of my friends and take his
rifle and try and shoot some game but he didn't catch anything.
Representative FORD. Did he buy the rifle or was it given to him?
Mrs. OSWALD. He bought it.
Representative FORD. What did you do with it when you went to the
United States?
Mrs. OSWALD. I think he sold it.
Representative FORD. Was it a rifle of--much like the one that was used
in the assassination?
Mrs. OSWALD. All rifles look alike to me.
Mr. McKENZIE. Did it have a telescopic sight on it, Marina?
Mrs. OSWALD. No.
Mr. McKENZIE. But it was similar to the same rifle that he had in the
United States?
Mrs. OSWALD. No. It wasn't identical but it might have been similar,
seeing as how they are both single barrel rifles. I don't understand
anything about rifles at all and I really am not qualified to talk
about them.
Mr. RANKIN. You mentioned that he went to the rifle club on one
occasion or the hunting club on one occasion with some friends to hunt
squirrels or rabbits or things of that sort. Did he go to the hunting
club on other occasions to practice to shoot?
Mrs. OSWALD. When I first saw the rifle here in the United States I
didn't pay much attention to it because I thought this was the rifle he
had brought from Russia.
Mr. RANKIN. Did he practice shooting the rifle in Russia?
Mrs. OSWALD. No.
Mr. RANKIN. Did you see him or observe him cleaning the rifle in Russia?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.
Mr. RANKIN. And would he clean the rifle, did he clean it on several
occasions?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes, several times.
Mr. RANKIN. The hunting club that he belonged to, did it have an
instructor in shooting the rifle?
Mrs. OSWALD. I don't know but there should have been one.
Mr. RANKIN. Now, he had to have a permit to purchase the rifle in
Russia.
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes; you can't possess a rifle without a--permission in
the Soviet Union.
Mr. RANKIN. Did he purchase the rifle from a government agency?
Mrs. OSWALD. You buy these rifles in special stores, but to buy them
you have to have a paper from the hunting club stating that you have
the right to buy a rifle.
Mr. RANKIN. And the authorized government official gave him authority
to buy the gun through the hunting club?
Mrs. OSWALD. The hunting club issues this permit. He used to clean the
rifle but he never used it. It always hung on the wall.
Mr. RANKIN. Mrs. Oswald, will you describe what you were saying off the
record in regard to his going out to use the rifle in the country as
distinguished from using it in the club?
Mrs. OSWALD. We all went out together in a group of boys and girls in
order to get--to swim a little and to get a suntan. It was a lake which
is just on the edge of town not far from Minsk, and the men had guns,
and they all went out to try to shoot some kind of rabbit or bird or
something like that, and the men went off together and I heard several
shots and they came back and they hadn't caught anything so we laughed
at it.
Mr. RANKIN. Did that happen more than once?
Mrs. OSWALD. Only one such trip. And even that time he didn't want to
take the gun with him. He took it only because one of my friends was
laughing at him and said, "You have a gun hanging here and you never
use it. Why don't you bring it along and see if you can use it."
Mr. RANKIN. Did you and your husband have any friends other than
Russians while you were at Minsk?
Mrs. OSWALD. There were friends. We had some friends from Argentina but
they didn't come on this excursion with us.
Mr. RANKIN. Did you have any friends there who were from Cuba?
Mrs. OSWALD. There were Cuban students studying in Minsk, and this
Argentinian girl had a Cuban boyfriend and possibly Lee met this
boyfriend, this Cuban student, but I never met him.
Mr. DULLES. Do you know where the Cuban students were studying, what
particular school?
Mrs. OSWALD. They study in various educational institutions in Minsk,
some are in the medical institute, others are in the agricultural and
others are in the polytechnical institute.
Mr. DULLES. Could you tell us a little more about these Argentinians,
were they there for educational reasons or what was the reason they
were there?
Mrs. OSWALD. Excuse me; I am mixed up with Cubans. You talk about
Argentinians?
Mr. DULLES. I asked about Argentinians but I would be glad to have you
add the Cubans to it, too.
Mrs. OSWALD. There is agreement between the Cuban Government and the
Russian Government; and the Cuban Government under this agreement sends
Cuban students to study in the Soviet Union.
From what I could tell from what Lee said, many of these Cuban
students were not satisfied with life in the Soviet Union, and this
Argentinian girl told me the same thing. Many of them thought that,
they were not satisfied with conditions in the Soviet Union and thought
if Castro were to be in power that the conditions in Cuba would become
similar to those in the Soviet Union and they were not satisfied with
this. They said it wasn't worth while carrying out a revolution just to
have the kind of life that these people in the Soviet Union had.
Representative FORD. Would you have any idea how many Cubans were in
school in Minsk?
Mrs. OSWALD. I heard the figure of 300 but I never knew even a single
one.
Representative FORD. Could you be more helpful in the kind of schools
they went to, what were the schools?
Mrs. OSWALD. Most of them were in agricultural institutes. Some were
in the institute of foreign languages where they spent a year studying
Russian in order subsequently to go on into some other institute
where they could study some more formal subject or some more formal
discipline.
Representative FORD. About how old were these students?
Mrs. OSWALD. About between 17 and 21.
Mr. DULLES. Was your husband absent from you during any protracted
period after your marriage, and during your stay in Minsk other than
the trip I think he took one trip to Moscow without you.
Mrs. OSWALD. Once I went to Kharkov, and he stayed in Minsk. Other than
that there were no absences on his part, except, of course, for the
trip to Moscow. Do you want to talk about the Argentinian students?
Mr. DULLES. Yes; if you have more to say about that.
Mrs. OSWALD. These are people who left Poland about 30 years previously
for Argentina. Then after the second World War the part of Poland where
they had been living became part of the Soviet Union and the father of
this family was an engineer and worked in the same factory where Lee
worked, his name was Zieger.
They had two daughters born in Argentina, and the wife was very
homesick for her native country, so they came back and the Soviet
Government gave them Soviet citizenship before they got on the boat to
come back. Then she told us what she had been reading in the newspapers
was just propaganda and they thought the life was a little better than
what they found out what it was when they arrived. Now, they have been
there 7 or 8 years and they would prefer to go back to Argentina but
they can't.
Mr. DULLES. In connection with your husband's work in the factory
did he have any indoctrination courses as a part of that in Marxism,
Leninism, or in anything of that kind in connection with his work in
the factory?
Mrs. OSWALD. I think there are such courses in the factory for party
members and for people who want to become party members but Lee never
went to them. When he was in Russia he didn't like Russian Communists.
He thought they were all bureaucrats. I don't actually know what he
liked except himself.
Mr. DULLES. Do you know whether your husband received any special pay
or special funds through the Russian Red Cross or through any other
channel in addition to his regular pay in the factory?
Mrs. OSWALD. Before we were married he apparently--he told me he was
getting some assistance from the Government, but he told me this after
we were married, and I don't know from whom or in what way he got it.
Representative FORD. Did you have any idea how much extra he was
getting over his wages?
Mrs. OSWALD. I don't know how much it was but he had quite a lot of
money in the beginning. Maybe he wrote about this in his diary.
Representative FORD. Did you know how much he was earning each week
while he was employed?
Mrs. OSWALD. In Russia they don't pay for every week. Eighty rubles a
month.
Representative FORD. Eighty rubles a month?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. Those are the new rubles?
Mrs. OSWALD. New rubles.
Mr. DULLES. Those were the new rubles, revalued rubles, that is about
$90; is it not?
Mrs. OSWALD. $90 or $80.
Representative FORD. While you were married did you know of any extra
money he was getting?
Mrs. OSWALD. He didn't receive any--he didn't receive any extra money
while we were married, he had a little bit left over from what he was
getting before, that is all.
Representative FORD. Did he handle all of the money that he received or
did he give you some while you were in the Soviet Union?
Mrs. OSWALD. I was working at the same time, and I gave him my salary
and he in turn would give me some money every now and then to buy
groceries with and that sort of thing, but I didn't ever get any money
from his salary.
Representative FORD. So the only income that you know about was the
money you earned and the money that he earned?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.
Representative FORD. And how much did you earn?
Mrs. OSWALD. 45.
Representative FORD. 45 rubles a month?
Mrs. OSWALD. A month.
Representative FORD. There were no other funds, to your knowledge, that
he received after you were married?
Mrs. OSWALD. No.
Representative FORD. He paid all the bills?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes. You didn't have too much bills in Russia.
Mr. DULLES. Did he take your money, too? What was your rent, do you
recall at that time, rent of the apartment?
Mrs. OSWALD. Seven rubles and 50 cents, kopeks.
Mr. DULLES. Was it 7 rubles and 50 kopeks? A week?
Mrs. OSWALD. A month; the rent in Russia are usually about 10 percent
of wages a month.
Mr. McKENZIE. Wages are low, too.
Mrs. OSWALD. Of course, people who get more, higher wages have bigger
apartments.
Mr. DULLES. Mr. Rankin, I think, is it all right to adjourn at this
point?
We will reconvene at 2 o'clock.
(Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the President's Commission recessed.)