The Trail of Lee Harvey Oswald

                

                           

                                            The Limo that JFK was riding in when he was assassinated 

In 1988 I went to Minsk—the capital city of Belarus—to find some facts about Lee Harvey Oswald, who was believed to be the lone gunman in the JFK assassination. It had been 25 years after President John F. Kennedy's assassination. The Minsk had almost forgotten the American defector who lived in their city. No one talked about him. Moreover, the Soviet people had no interest in the JFK saga, and they had other things to worry about. Perestroika and economic changes have caused dramatic changes in their lives. People were anxious about the market economy and other reforms that rapidly changed Soviet society.

It was mid-January, and the temperature was about minus sixteen degrees Celsius. My Polish winter coat did not fully help me to fight the Russian winter that defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus. The cold wind was terrible, and it was piercing through my bones.

Near the Minsk train station (Vokzal Minsk), I took a taxi cab—a black Volga, which was popularly known as the Russian Mercedes. The taxi driver was a middle-aged man who knew the city of Minsk like the back of his hand. Where to? He asked in a polite manner. I immediately noticed his Belorussian accent. I did not know my destination. It was a frantic effort to look for someone who lived in this city some 26 years ago. I had no address, only a name: Mr. Lee Harvey Oswald.

I need to find the apartment that Lee Harvey Oswald lived in many years ago, I told the taxi driver. Who? He asked with surprise. I explained to him again, Lee Harvey Oswald, the guy who killed the president of the United States of America. The taxi driver had no clue about Lee Harvey Oswald. But he knew who JFK was. So we reached a police officer. I posed the same question to him. Instead of answering my question, he checked my documents. I was a medical student on my winter vacation, and I had obtained a visa to travel to West Germany. My documents were in proper order. So he returned my documents.

The policeman looked dumb, and he had no intention of helping us. The weather was becoming bad, and heavy snowfall made me nervous. I had to meet someone who knew the city’s history. Nothing came to my mind. I was about to give up the Oswald mission. But suddenly I decided to go to a museum and meet a curator or someone. I asked the driver to go to the Belarusian National Arts Museum. At the museum I met an elderly gentleman who was a journalist. He had worked for the Literaturnaya Gazeta many years ago.

When I told him about Lee Harvey Oswald, he knew who he was. Da, Da, Amarikanez, he replied. The old journalist gave us directions. Oswald had lived in an apartment building near the Svisloch River.

After driving through a heavy snow blizzard, we reached our destination. It was an old apartment building with a gloomy look. He lived on the 3rd floor. This was the place where that well-known Lee Harvey Oswald had once lived. The weather was bad, and we saw no one on the street. There were no signboards or plaques. The city had forgotten its ignominious adopted son. This place could have been a major tourist attraction. But the city officials wanted to maintain a low profile on Oswald. Maybehe was an embarrassment to the Soviet officials.

Despite heavy snowfall, we spent a few minutes there. I imagined how Oswald and his Russian wife, Marina, walked through these streets. To me, Oswald was not a hero but an enigma. I could smell him near that old apartment building. Something was in that atmosphere that I could not explain. MaybeI was superstitious. Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? An unstable, insignificant man who changed modern history?

I went back to the Minsk train station to take a train to go to Kishinev—Moldavian Republic. I tried to forget Oswald completely and concentrate on my exams. But he was in my thoughts. After many years, in 2002, this trip inspired me to write a book on JFK. It was the first book about JFK in the Sinhala language. The book was titled John F Kennedy Jevithaya Ha Maranaya (JFK Life and Death) and published by the Wijesuriya Grantha Kendraya. In 2010 I went to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and saw the ill-fated limousine—a Lincoln Continental 4-door convertible—in which JFK was riding in Dallas.

Now fifty years have passed after the JFK assassination. Still, we know little about the assassination, and many conspiracy theories are circulating. Who killed John F. Kennedy? Did Lee Harvey Oswald pull the trigger? Still, there are no satisfactory answers. There are many gaps and unanswered questions.

Lee Harvey Oswald lived in the Soviet Union from October 1959 to June 1962. During this time period, Nikita Khrushchev was the head of the state. After his defection to the USSR, Oswald was given a job in a radio factory in Minsk, Belorussia. There he met a Russian girl named Marina whose uncle was a KGB officer. Oswald fell in love with Marina, and they got married. He lived in Minsk until 1962.

 Lee Harvey Oswald

Oswald claimed that he was a Marxist-Leninist. But he knew very little about Marxism. According to Peter Savodnik, Lee Harvey Oswald's biographer, his defection was more psychological than ideological. The Soviets expected Lee Harvey Oswald to help in their propaganda effort against the West. But Oswald did not participate in propaganda work.

Some argue that after Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, the KGB found numerous secrets related to the U-2 spy plane. In 1960 a Soviet surface-to-air missile shot down a U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers. This incident jeopardized the peace talks between the USA and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

To Oswald, life in Minsk was becoming monotonous. He was not happy with his life, and he decided to come back to the USA. Some reports indicate that after coming back to the United States, he was involved in the Free Cuba Committee, which was an anti-Castro organization. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Oswald became furious and determined to kill President Kennedy.

                               

 Minsk apartment where Kennedy assassin Oswald lived three years

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was killed by a sniper in Dallas, Texas. The police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald for the crime. While being escorted to the Dallas County Jail, Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby. Oswald succumbed to his gunshot injuries. He was 24 years old. Oswald was buried in Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth, Texas. Oswald’s mother, his wife Marina, and 22-month-old daughter June attend the funeral.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s remains were exhumed in October 1981 following speculations made by a group of people. They claimed that a Soviet spy was buried in place of Lee Harvey Oswald’s grave. Finally the family members gave their consent to open the grave. Oswald’s widow, Marina Porter Oswald, was present at the exhumation. The remains were examined by a team of pathologists. They compared Oswald’s dental records and found a positive dental identification. The team leader, Dr. Linda Norton, pronounced that the individual buried under the name of Lee Harvey Oswald in Rose Hill Cemetery was in fact Lee Harvey Oswald.

by Dr Ruwan M Jayatunge