I am starting a new life and I do not wish to have anything to do with the old life.
I hope you and your family will always be in good health.
Lee 556

His mother mailed him a personal check for $20 dated December 18. It was returned to her on January 5 with the notation that he could not "use this check, of course"; he asked her to send him $20 in cash and added that he had little money and needed "the rest," presumably a reference to the $100 he had given her in September. Mrs. Oswald later sent him a money order for about $25.557

On January 4, Oswald was summoned to the Soviet Passport Office and given Identity Document for Stateless Persons No. 811479.558 He was told that he was being sent to Minsk,559 an industrial city located about 450 miles southwest of Moscow and with a population in 1959 of about 510,000.560 His disappointment that he had not been granted Soviet citizenship was balanced by relief that the uncertainty was ended; he told Rima Shirokova that he was happy.561 On the following day, he went to a Government agency which the Russians call the "Red Cross"; it gave him 5,000 rubles (about 500 new rubles, or $500 at the official exchange rate).562 He used 2,200 rubles to pay his hotel bill and 150 rubles to purchase a railroad ticket to
Minsk. 563

Oswald arrived in Minsk on January 7. He was met at the station by two "Red Cross" workers who took him to the Hotel Minsk. Two Intourist employees, both of whom spoke excellent English, were waiting for him.564 One of them, a young woman named Roza Kuznetsova, became his dose friend and attended his 21st birthday party in October 1960.565 (See Commission Exhibit No. 2609, p. 271. ) On the following day, Oswald met the "Mayor," who welcomed him to Minsk, promised him a rent-free apartment, and warned him against "uncultured persons" who sometimes insulted foreigners.566

Oswald reported for work at the Belorussian Radio and Television Factory on January 13.567 Two days earlier he had visited the factory and met Alexander Ziger, a Polish Jew who had emigrated to Argentina in 1938 and went to Russia in 1955. Ziger was a department head at the factory; he spoke English, and he and iris family became good friends of Oswald and corresponded with him after Iris return to the United States.568 The factory, a major producer of electronic parts and systems, employed about 5,000 persons.569 Oswald's union card described him as a "metal worker"; 570 Marina testified that he fashioned parts on a lathe.571 As Oswald later described it, the shop in