On the night of July 16th,
1918 the Russian Royal Family was brutally and unnecessarily murdered. The family
of seven consisted of Tsar Nicholas II, the crowned Queen Alexandra, their only
son and heir Alexei, and the four grand duchess Titania, Olga, Maria and
Anastasia. History tells the story of the royal family being herded into a
small room in the basement of their mansion, where twelve gunmen shot and
killed off Russia’s royal family. However, there were many complications that
occurred while the murders took place. Russian records explain that the small
room were the murders took place quickly filled with smoke from the continual
gun fire. Each of the twelve gunman had a specific target of the royal family
to kill, for efficiency purposes. After each gunman fired several shots at their
specific target the fire ceased and the door to the room was opened to let out
the smoke. As the air cleared, to the gunmen’s shock, some of the girls sat up and
began screaming. Shots were again fired and the screaming of the girls
continued. Records explain that the gunmen were ordered to bludgeon the girls
to death with their rifles. That is where the story ended.
However, after the assassination of
the Royal Family rumors began surfacing around Russia that one daughter
survived. Popular belief claims that it was the youngest daughter of Tsar
Nicholas II, Anastasia Romanov.
In 1982, in a woods in Siberia, the bones of the Tsar and
his family were found. The rumors of Anastasia's miraculous survival were fueled
further because two bodies were missing; the Tsar’s son Alexei's body was
missing along with one of his daughters.
Throughout
the years since the murder of the Romanov family, many women have claimed to be
the grand duchess Anastasia. Unlike most of the claimants one of them didn’t
attempt to chase the throne of Russia. This women lived out her life in fear
and only told her relatives about her extraordinary story. This women has since
passed and her relatives now believe that the time is right to share the truth
behind her life. Now forensic scientists have the technology to examine her
bones and find out if she is in fact Anastasia Romanov, the Grand Duchess of Russia.
Before we
look at the claims, we should first examine what happened on the night of the
assassination.
Russia was in the middle civil
unrest in 1918. The people of Russia looked to the royal family for help,
however the Tsar didn’t do much in the way of helping. The Bolsheviks led by Yakov
Yurovsky, were in charge of assassinating the royal family. The Bolsheviks were
a group of people in Russia trying to overthrow the monarchy. So they devised a
plan to get rid of the royal family. Yurovsky told the Tsar that fighting had
broken out in nearby areas, so to insure the safety of his life as well as his
family’s, they were to wait in the basement. Then, Yurovsky told the royal
family that the people of Moscow believed that they were dead and to re-insure
the people the family was alive and well he would take their picture and send
it back to Moscow as proof. As the family lined up to take the false
photograph, the twelve gunmen marched into the room. Yurovsky read a death sentence
to the Tsar and his family and the shooting commenced. Like I stated in the beginning,
the gunmen fired so many shots the room quickly filled with smoke. Eye witness
of the assassination said that the bullets bounced off the girl’s bodies as the
men began shooting. The royal family took many precautionary measures because of
the war that was going on in their own backyard. One of those measures included
lining each of the daughters and Queen Alexandria’s corsets with diamonds,
pearls and rubies. This explains why the some of the daughters were still alive
after the gun fire had ceased. After the men were certain that everyone was
dead, the bodies were loaded up into a truck and driven to a nearby woods to be
disposed of. This is where the stories begin to clash. The men try to figure
out the easiest way to get rid of the royal bodies. They first try to burn the
Tsar’s body however that proves to be difficult and tedious. A story comes from
one of the gun men who was in charge of murdering the family. He claims the
while the others were figuring out what to do with the bodies he witnessed
Anastasia wake up in the bed of the truck. He states that he helped her out of
the truck and told her to run away. Another story involves a witness of the
crimes against the royal family. A women witnessed the gunmen attempting to get
rid of the Tsars body. As the men were burning the body, she helped Anastasia
out of the truck and led her to safety. Regardless if those stories are true or
not, the fact is that there are two bodies that were not at the disposal sight
and were still missing.
What happened to Anastasia Romanov? Did she meet the
same fate as the rest as her family or did the Grand Duchess survive? To be
continued…
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