Your impressions of him, what you thought of him.
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Disagreeable. He was very, very disagreeable, and disappointed. He is like a puppy dog that everybody kicked. And he was sort of withdrawn within himself. And his greatest objection was that people helped them too much, they were showering things on Marina. Marina had a hundred dresses given. to her. The baby had a crib. My daughter didn't have it when I came to the United States, and I didn't have one-hundredth of what Marina had because I didn't know anybody, and I didn't want to know anybody when I came over. I was in such circumstances. So, anyway, he objected to that lavish help, because Marina was throwing it into his face.

Mr. Jenner.

She was?
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Absolutely--see people, how nice they are? And she is always telling me the people are nice, giving all these things, and he is insulting them for it. He was offensive with the people. And I can understand why, and maybe I was the only one that understood him, while he was offensive, because that hurt him. He could never give her what the people were showering on her. So that was very difficult for him, no matter how hard he worked--and he worked very hard. He worked overtime, he used to come in at 11 o'clock, she said, at night, and when he come home, he started reading again. So he was not running around.
He didn't drink, he didn't smoke. He was just hard working, but a very difficult personality.
And usually offensive at people because people had an offensive attitude to him.
I don't think he was offensive for that, because of the things we did, he could have killed us.

Mr. Jenner.

What did you do?
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, you see, he mistreated his wife physically. We saw her with a black eye once.

Mr. Jenner.

And did you talk to him and to her about it?
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; we did. I called him just like our own kids, and set them down, and I said, "Listen, you have to grow up, you cannot live like that. This is not a country that permits such things to happen. If you love each other, behave. If you cannot live with each other peacefully, without all this awful behavior, you should separate, and see, maybe you really don't love each other."
Marina was, of course, afraid she will be left all alone, if she separate from Oswald--what is she going to do? She doesn't know the language, she had nobody to turn to. I understand they didn't get along with Oswald's family.

Mr. Jenner.

Now, this is what you learned in talking with them?
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes, yes; through them actually, by facing them.

Mr. Jenner.

I want you to identify your sources of information.
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes, yes.

Mr. Jenner.

You learned through Marina and Oswald, also, that they didn't get along well with their----
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. I cannot say through them, because maybe people talked about it, you know. She couldn't live in her sister-in-law's home, they didn't get along. And I understand that later on somebody mentioned that the reason was that she was just too lazy. She slept in the morning.

Mr. Jenner.

What was your impression?
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. She is lazy. You see, there are people that actually are no good, but still they have something very nice about them, that you cannot really be furious with them or mad, you really can't. She is lazy, and I know it, because she stayed once overnight.

Mr. Jenner.

Where? At your home?
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; with the baby. And I tell you--if I stay with somebody overnight, I will jump up the first thing in the morning, see what I can do to help, knowing I will be doing everything. She didn't. She slept. I actually had to waken her up. She did the same thing---she stayed in our daughter's home overnight. Because when her teeth

« Previous | Next »

Found a Typo?

Click here

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