Lorenz Marita

German-American adventurer with a remarkable story made into a movie by German producer Wilfried Huismann, a dramatized thriller called "Dear Fidel." Marita was the daughter of Heinrich Lorenz, the captain of a liner that traveled between Germany and the States, and Alice June Lofland, an American actress. The family survived the war and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Post-war, at the age of seven, she was raped by an American solider. Her mother took the children to America to live, but Marita traveled with her dad whenever she was allowed, loving the trips on her dad’s ship, the "Berlin." In 1959, only a few weeks after the revolution, at the age of 19 Marita first met Fidel Castro on board the ship. Becoming Fidel’s lover, she stayed on in Havana. When Fidel lost interest in her and after an abortion, she returned to the U.S. In Miami, Marita was conscripted by the CIA as an ideal assassin of Castro, and she was trained as a agent. In an interview in 2000, she said that they "made a robot out of me," with brainwashing. She returned to Cuba and went to Fidels suite in the Habana Libre Hotel with poison capsules but spontaneously decided to throw them into the bidet. "Love was stronger," she said and the story line related that Fidel asked her if she had been sent to kill him; that she had said Yes; and they fell into each other’s arms and into bed. Having failed her mission, Marita returned to America. The CIA engaged her in further training in the Florida swamps and she was given missions in a terrorist unit. For several years, Marita took part in various anti-Castro activities. She became fond of the life as a "happy gangster" on government missions. She learned to steal weapons and to drops leaflets over Havana: "Down with Fidel." On the leaflets, Marita added in her own hand, "Fidel, I love you." During one mission she became acquainted with the former dictator of Venezuela, General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and began an affair with him. The relationship lasted only long enough to produce her daughter Mónica in 1962. Her son Mark was born in 1969 with her marriage to an FBI agent. The following years were the most peaceful in her life. Working for the FBI under the guise of a job as caretaker, she and her husband spied on Soviet and Chinese diplomats in a high-rise building but otherwise led a "normal" family life in New York. However, inquiries of the Investigation Committee into the assassination of J. F. Kennedy exposed the story of her life to the public. Marita testified that in November 1963 she was on the way to Dallas with a CIA-financed unit with a trunk full of weapons, a few days before the assassination of the president. The story claims that she named one of the men in the unit as Lee Harvey Oswald. As a consequence of the exposure, Marita lost her job at the FBI and nearly her life. She and her children survived several attacks and she became an expert in the art of survival. In the 1980s Marita began to work for the CIA once more, this time in charge of Cuban refugees in the U.S. reception camps. By 2000, Marita was living on welfare in an impoverished section of New York. Her health was unstable and her son Mark was taking care of her while her daughter was leading a life apart from her. Early in 2000, she made a trip into her past with film-maker and three-time winner of the Grimme Prize Wilfried Huismann, who documented the dangerous drama of her lifelong love to Fidel Castro. At the same time Maritas Read less