Historic ALS signed “Lee,” one page, 5.5 x 9.75, no date [circa June 25, 1961]. Oswald writes from Minsk to his mother, Marguerite (1907–1981). In full [his spellings and punctuation retained]: “Received your letter today and was surprised that you are working on a ranch. Where is Cromwell Texas, anyway? How is it you decieded to go there? I am glad you think Marina is beauiful and I shall be good to her. She dosen’t have a mother and father they are dead. But she has a lot of aunts and uncles here in minsk and also in Leingrad where she was born. She was living at her aunts place when I met her they are real nice people here uncle is a major in the Soviet army. She work as a druggist. She finised the university two years ago for that occupation. We are in good health and Im glad you are with good people also. Love XXX....” After signing, Oswald adds a postscript: “Marina send her love, also.” After a stint in the U.S. Marines—where he trained as a radar operator and qualified as both a sharpshooter and marksman (though barely meeting the minimum level of proficiency)—Oswald was issued a hardship discharge at the age of 19 for falsely claiming that he needed to care for his mother. In September 1959 Oswald departed from New Orleans to the Soviet Union, via France and England, and arrived in Moscow on October 16. Within days he visited the American embassy, declaring that he wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship, and applied for Russian citizenship, for which he was ultimately rejected. Settling in Minsk with a comfortable (by Soviet standards) apartment and a secure job in an electronics factory, Oswald met Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova (born 1941) at a dance hall in March 1961, and they married less than six weeks later, on April 30. In June 1962, months after the birth of their first daughter, June Lee, the Oswalds moved to the Dallas area with official and financial assistance from the U.S. government. The letter, together with its original mailing envelope (see Lot 359), was an official exhibit (No. 180) in the Warren Commission investigation into JFK’s assassination; the letter, like most of the exhibits, was at that time protectively soft-laminated. The letter (complete with affixed exhibit label) is reproduced and transcribed on page 530 of Volume XVI of Hearings before the President’s commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (aka the Warren Report). After the conclusion of the investigation, Oswald’s letters to his mother, of which a number were entered into evidence, were apparently returned to her. In 1964 Marguerite Oswald released a record album of readings of some of Lee’s letters from Russia, while the October 8, 1965 issue of Time magazine reported that she “[auctioned] off the documentary remains of her son—baptismal certificate, a few letters” in an auction that brought in a total of $7,165. Provenance: Charles Hamilton Galleries auction, New York, December 12, 1968. A copy of the original catalogue listing and final price list is included. Intersecting mailing folds and lamination as noted, otherwise fine condition. Auction LOA John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and R&R COA.
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