Marita Lorenz

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Ilona Marita Lorenz (born August 18, 1939 in Bremen ; † August 31, 2019 in Oberhausen ) was a German who became internationally known through publications about her love affair with the leader of the Cuban revolution , Fidel Castro , which she had maintained for several months in 1959 .

biography

Marita Lorenz was the daughter of Captain Heinrich Lorenz and the American dancer Alice June Lorenz, née Lofland. She spent her childhood with her mother, her father, who was often absent due to work, and her three siblings in Bremen. During the Second World War , the mother was temporarily arrested several times in Germany on suspicion of espionage for Great Britain and the USA . Mother and daughter experienced the end of the war in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp because of the accusation that Alice had helped liberate forced laborers in Bremen .

In 1959 she was on a Caribbean cruise on board the Berlin , on which her father was the captain. The Berlin docked in Havana , Cuba shortly after the end of the Cuban Revolution . She met President Fidel Castro during a visit on board and became his lover.

After this relationship ended, she was recruited by the CIA and worked with militant Castro opponents in Florida . She first went back to Germany. She then returned to Miami to join Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt . The former was the leader of the "International Anti-Communist Brigade", " Operation 40 ", the latter was responsible for financing at the CIA. Both were also involved in the Watergate break-in. Marita Lorenz was sent by the CIA in January 1960 to assassinate Castro, but did not carry out the project.

She also knew Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, according to testimony before an American court in a libel suit . There she stated under oath that the day before the assassination attempt on American President Kennedy , weapons had been transported to Dallas. Orlando Bosch and Pedro Díaz Lanz are said to have been present at this, along with other well-known people from Group 40, as well as Gerry Hemming , Frank Sturgis and the Novo brothers (including Guillermo Novo ) in a secured house of the CIA in Dallas . The statements of Marita Lorenz and the aforementioned representatives of the anti-Cuban terrorist opposition are diametrically opposed to the events on the days before the attack. The fact that Oswald and Hunt were demonstrably not at the locations specified by Lorenz at the time in question makes the American political scientist John McAdams doubt the credibility of their statements. Lorenz also claims to have met Oswald before the attempted invasion of the Bay of Pigs during paramilitary training sessions in Florida and Central America. This cannot be the case either, since Oswald stayed in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962 .

After the plan to attack Fidel Castro that was not carried out, she was in an intimate relationship with the Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez , who was living in exile. Pérez was in contact with Carlos Marcello and Meyer Lansky . Marita has a daughter with him, Mónica. After his death, Pérez Marita bequeathed US $ 5 million, which the CIA is said to have withheld.

In 1993 she wrote her first autobiography Marita with Ted Schwarz . Her second autobiography, Lieber Fidel - Mein Leben, Meine Liebe, mein Verrat , was published in 2002 with the collaboration of the German filmmaker Wilfried Huismann . Huismann also made a documentary about Marita Lorenz, Dear Fidel - Marita's story , published in 2000 . In 2015, Lorenz published a new version of her autobiography in Spanish with the assistance of Idoya Noain. In January 2016 it was announced that a Hollywood film version of her life was planned.

Marita Lorenz died on August 31, 2019 in Oberhausen of heart failure. The play Everything is True - The Nine Lives of Marita Lorenz , which takes up her life , was premiered in October 2019 at Theater Oberhausen , where it will be on the program until spring 2020.

Publications

  • Marita (with Ted Schwarz), Goldmann, Munich 1994, ISBN 3442428335 (translation of the English-language original edition from 1993)
  • Dear Fidel - My life, my love, my betrayal (with Wilfried Huismann), List Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3471780793
  • Yo fui la espía que amó al Comandante (with Idoya Noain), Ediciones Península, Barcelona 2015, ISBN 978-84-9942-421-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John McAdams: JFK Assassination Logic. How to Think About Claims of Conspiracy. Potomac Books, Dulles, VA 2011, pp. 83 ff.
  2. ↑ variety.com, accessed January 20, 2016
  3. ↑ Marita Lorenz, Who Told Tales of Castro and Kennedy, Dies at 80. In: New York Times of September 5, 2019 (English)
  4. ↑ Pieces: Everything is true. Website of the Theater Oberhausen, accessed on September 6, 2019
  5. ↑ The Life of the Castro Lover is now a play. In: Bild.de from October 13, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Lorenz, Marita
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lorenz, Ilona Marita (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lover Fidel Castro
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 2019
Place of death Oberhausen