Fidel was my
HOW A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR BECAME CASTRO’S TEE
TO adventurous Marita Lorenz, Fidel Castro was the dashing leader who became her lover.
To the rest of the world he was the terrifying dictator who brought civilisation to the brink of nuclear annihilation.
Sadly, the revolutionary chief who swept young Marita off her feet showed her a disregard suffered by many women – even stealing their child from her womb.
And in an astonishing cloak and dagger episode from the Cold War era, her cruel treatment led to her being recruited as an American spy and would-be assassin.
A CIA agent gave Marita the job of poisoning her former lover, telling her she would be ridding the world of a dangerous despot. She recalls the moment in her new book, The Spy Who Loved Castro – now being made into a Hollywood film starring The Hunger Games’s Jennifer Lawrence.
Marita wrote: “He opened a box, inside which was a packet containing two pills, and announced, ‘ This is going to change history.’ They gave me the weapons to turn me into an assassin. It would have marked me for life and marked history itself.
“I didn’t care about who he was to the rest of the world or about politics. I only cared about him. My man. Fidel.
“I asked, ‘Why do I have to do it?’ still finding it hard to believe. ‘He ruined your life,’ he reminded me.”
Besotted
Marita first met Castro on February 27, 1959, on board a cruise ship captained by her German father, Heinrich Lorenz.
When they docked in Cuban capital Havana, Castro commandeered a launch and went on board, backed by 25 armed men.
Marita, whose father was sleeping, greeted the Cubans on the gangway.
She said: “I will never forget the first time I beheld that penetrating stare, that beautiful face, that wicked and seductive smile.
“He introduced himself in English, ‘I am Dr Castro, Fidel. I am Cuba.’
“I offered to show him around the ship. Fidel touched my hand and an electric charge ran through me.
“I showed him where my cabin was. I opened the door and he tookook me by the arm and pushed me inside. Withoutthout ceremony, he embraced me and kisseded me. I had fallen hopelessly in love.”
Marita had been desperateate to start a new life after a miserable childhood. At the age of five in the he Second World War, she and her American mother Alice were imprisonedoned by the Nazis in t he Bergen- n- Belsen concentration camp.
They survived but her parentsarents divorced a few years later. When Marita went to live with Castro in Cuba inn March 1959 she was a 19-year-old old student and he was 32. Theyey made love at the Havana na Hilton ered th hidden momen
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