Oswald in Holland

[Peter Fokes]

Oswald in Holland, and on the Orient Express, by

Perry Vermeulen:

http://oswaldinholland.web-log.nl/

Thanks to Robert Howard for calling attention to this site.

BK

Years ago I was politely asking this guy, "Perry Vermeulen", for a copy of the ship log/passenger manifest of the Maasdam showing Oswald. He shined me on for weeks. He repeatedly said he would email me a copy. He continued making excuses why he couldn't like he was on a trip, must be a long trip as I'm still waiting to see it.

Now I was not asking for it to see Oswald's name, I was looking for other names. Whom else was aboard, etc. I notice he uses crops of the pages with LHO and his ship cabin neighbor. Never going to get him to share it...Does anyone have a Maasdam passenger manifest besides this dead end?

The passenger list made its first appearance on the internet in 2006 on my website. After publishing the complete passenger list, I had several online discussions with Perry. Mark Bridger also tried to contact me.

The "Oswald" page first appeared in May 2006. Here is the URL:

http://www.toronto.hm/ss_maasdam7.html

You can go through the list page by page by clicking the "next" at the bottom of each page. Start here:

http://www.toronto.hm/ss_maasdam.html

If anyone wants paper copies of the list, ask, and I'll dig them out of my old files.

Regards,

Peter Fokes,

Toronto

Edited August 16, 2011 by Peter Fokes

[Peter Fokes]

Thanks Hugo!

I have way more faith in you than Perry.

Yeah Steve he seemed very nice, but so is a skunk...till you realize something smells(In Denmark~Shakespeare)

Ed

I did a little bit of digging, and although as a researcher I do not particularly trust him or agree with his conclusions, Edward J Epstein asserts in the article

[see link] that he located the passenger manifest of the SS Maasdam, also see Pieter Didenko, ostensible Russian-speaking steward of the Maasdam, and also maintains

the SS Maasdam employment history was destroyed.

http://www.maryferre...082&relPageId=4

The ship passenger manifest would have approximately 1,400 names if Edward J Epstein is correct, although his citation re Didenko is attributed to Priscilla McMillan, another "researcher" whom I believe echoes the party line, and I don't mean the Commies...lol

Thanks Ed for the friendly words! I will do my best.

And Robert: thanks for the interesting find. I did some more searches at MFF and found a very interesting article: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=90661&relPageId=27

Mark tried to contact me in 2006 shortly after I published the list on the web. It appears he used a Printscreen copy of the Oswald page on my website for this Dealey Plaza Echo article. Fine with me :-)

[Hugo Langendoen]

I got a reaction back from a webmaster of an Holland America Line website. He is willing to make (xerox) copies of the passenger list and sent that to me by mail.

He wrote that he obtained a copy from the Rotterdam City Archive. I will wait till the mail arrives and then will try to make some good scans. Hopefully that will work out well.

I also will go to the archives as soon as I have some free time (hopefully on Friday, and otherwise somewhere next week) to look at the original of the list, and hopefully I can find some more information there regarding the employees on board. Off course I do realize that other people may have tried it before, but you never know :-)

I re-read the book Perry wrote. As promised I will present the most important findings here:

The book starts with some overall information about Kennedy, his election, and his time in office. Nothing new there.

It starts to become more interesting when he starts detailing the travel from Moscow to Rotterdam. A lot of things in the book are basically the same as in Mark's article which I quoted above.

Also Perry depends quite heavily on quotes from the 1977 book Marina and Lee.

Perry has a picture of a time-table in the book which shows the normal route from Moscow to Rotterdam. Interestingly this show the train with the Oswalds had about 45 minutes in Berlin.

After that most carriages of the train proceeds to The Netherlands. Just as Mark noticed: Lee's passport did not get stamped at the border crossing Marienborn / Helmstedt (which is the crossing between the East and West Germany). At the German / Dutch border at Oldenzaal both Marina and Lee got another stamp in their passport.

Another noteworthy thing from Perry's book is that the train stops at Rotterdam-North station, instead of Rotterdam Central Station. This is also shown at the train time-table.

This is significant because now the entry in LHO's notebook make sense. There is a note about train nr 11 in it, and left-to-right, and an address (which is misspelled in Mark's article) Mathenesserlaan 250.

The tram nr 11 is the train from Rotterdam North to the Mathenesserlaan. And to reach that train from this station one has to walk left, and then turn right.

It was only a walk of a few minutes to get on the tram. The Mathenesserlaan was a nice and decent street in an expensive part of Rotterdam. At the address was a boarding house, called Huize Avila (House Avila).

Later the building was sold to a notary, and nowadays it is a regular apartment-building. I will drive by in the next few days and take some pictures to show how it looks like now.

Perry also notes that LHO notebook contained another address in the center of Rotterdam: Meent 92. At the time this was an office from American Express. Perry tried to contact them to get hold of the file they presumable still have, but he got no for an answer. I guess the tickets were ordered from the US Embassy and Oswald had to pick them up in Rotterdam.

Perry makes a little error in the book. He says that the passenger list shows how much money the Oswald had with them. But according to the webmaster from the HAL site the amount of money is the price the people paid for their tickets. As soon as the copies of the list arrives I will dive into that.

So far for this little update. To be continued :-)

[Hugo Langendoen]

Oswald in Holland, and on the Orient Express, by

Perry Vermeulen:

http://oswaldinholland.web-log.nl/

Thanks to Robert Howard for calling attention to this site.

BK

Years ago I was politely asking this guy, "Perry Vermeulen", for a copy of the ship log/passenger manifest of the Maasdam showing Oswald. He shined me on for weeks. He repeatedly said he would email me a copy. He continued making excuses why he couldn't like he was on a trip, must be a long trip as I'm still waiting to see it.

Now I was not asking for it to see Oswald's name, I was looking for other names. Whom else was aboard, etc. I notice he uses crops of the pages with LHO and his ship cabin neighbor. Never going to get him to share it...Does anyone have a Maasdam passenger manifest besides this dead end?

The passenger list made its first appearance on the internet in 2006 on my website. After publishing the complete passenger list, I had several online discussions with Perry. Mark Bridger also tried to contact me.

The "Oswald" page first appeared in May 2006. Here is the URL:

http://www.toronto.hm/ss_maasdam7.html

You can go through the list page by page by clicking the "next" at the bottom of each page. Start here:

http://www.toronto.hm/ss_maasdam.html

If anyone wants paper copies of the list, ask, and I'll dig them out of my old files.

Regards,

Peter Fokes,

Toronto

Thanks for the link! I tried to blow the image up, but then the words become a bit grainy (I hope I spelled that word right...)

So I hope the original is a bit better. Off course I let you know.

[Peter Fokes]

Oswald in Holland, and on the Orient Express, by

Perry Vermeulen:

http://oswaldinholland.web-log.nl/

Thanks to Robert Howard for calling attention to this site.

BK

Years ago I was politely asking this guy, "Perry Vermeulen", for a copy of the ship log/passenger manifest of the Maasdam showing Oswald. He shined me on for weeks. He repeatedly said he would email me a copy. He continued making excuses why he couldn't like he was on a trip, must be a long trip as I'm still waiting to see it.

Now I was not asking for it to see Oswald's name, I was looking for other names. Whom else was aboard, etc. I notice he uses crops of the pages with LHO and his ship cabin neighbor. Never going to get him to share it...Does anyone have a Maasdam passenger manifest besides this dead end?

The passenger list made its first appearance on the internet in 2006 on my website. After publishing the complete passenger list, I had several online discussions with Perry. Mark Bridger also tried to contact me.

The "Oswald" page first appeared in May 2006. Here is the URL:

http://www.toronto.hm/ss_maasdam7.html

You can go through the list page by page by clicking the "next" at the bottom of each page. Start here:

http://www.toronto.hm/ss_maasdam.html

If anyone wants paper copies of the list, ask, and I'll dig them out of my old files.

Regards,

Peter Fokes,

Toronto

Thanks for the link! I tried to blow the image up, but then the words become a bit grainy (I hope I spelled that word right...)

So I hope the original is a bit better. Off course I let you know.

Hugh,

I have added a link to a TIF version of the image. If you click on the "View in TIF format" link near the top of the page, you will be able to magnify the document to your heart's content and it should not become grainy!

Try it

http://www.toronto.hm/ss_maasdam7.html

If there are requests to see the remaining pages of the list in TIF, I will add the link to the other pages as well ..... but ya gotta ask ...

Have fun!

Regards

Peter Fokes

Edited August 18, 2011 by Peter Fokes

[Hugo Langendoen]

Hugh,

I have added a link to a TIF version of the image. If you click on the "View in TIF format" link near the top of the page, you will be able to magnify the document to your heart's content and it should not become grainy!

Try it

http://www.toronto.hm/ss_maasdam7.html

If there are requests to see the remaining pages of the list in TIF, I will add the link to the other pages as well ..... but ya gotta ask ...

Have fun!

Regards

Peter Fokes

Peter,

Wow!!! Thanks. That is a great image. If it is possible to do that for the other pages as well you would make me even more happy :-)

Thank you so much for your efforts!!!

[Peter Fokes]

Hugh,

I have added a link to a TIF version of the image. If you click on the "View in TIF format" link near the top of the page, you will be able to magnify the document to your heart's content and it should not become grainy!

Try it

http://www.toronto.hm/ss_maasdam7.html

If there are requests to see the remaining pages of the list in TIF, I will add the link to the other pages as well ..... but ya gotta ask ...

Have fun!

Regards

Peter Fokes

Peter,

Wow!!! Thanks. That is a great image. If it is possible to do that for the other pages as well you would make me even more happy :-)

Thank you so much for your efforts!!!

Done! (except for one page)

Start here:

http://www.toronto.hm/ss_maasdam.html

I have included the TIF link near the top of every page (except for one page, 1a). Maybe if I keep searching my old files, I will find the page starting with "Brand" and ending with "Duk." I stored these pages away six years ago, and have no idea where the one missing page has gone!

No doubt the CIA snuck in and stole it! Must contain the smoking gun! Ha, ha.

Keep smiling.

Peter Fokes,

Toronto

[Hugo Langendoen]

Thank you so much! Great to be able to view it in such a clear way. The webmaster of a HAL- website promised to sent me a list on paper.

If I get it I can scan page 1a and put it up here. Then I can do something in return :-)

Btw: would be an interesting lead in the investigation when the CIA stole page 1a One might wonder who's name is up there... Haha.

[Perry Vermeulen]

An interesting read, this threat. Its a pity I didnt engage in this forum earlier... When there are still questions or remarks, please let me know. And Ed LeDoux; I really can't remember what happened those days with our correspondence.