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Films and TV shows about the Romanovs and Imperial Russia / "The Real Anastasia" on Travel Channel
« on: August 30, 2014, 10:23:03 PM »
Here is a segment from the Travel Channel show Mysteries at the Museum. http://www.travelchannel.com/video/the-real-anastasia The show is generally wonderfully done and they do a good job on the reenactments, although they did a very silly story on John Wilkes Booth (another person who had a claimant/impostor in later years and his was probably a better match) and I told them so. According to this program, the DNA from Anna Anderson was taken from a hair sample left at the Charlottesville Historical Society and a test simply showed she was "not a Romanov." They didn't say against whose DNA they checked it or how and I don't recall that they even said who performed the tests or when. I understood the definitive tests had been taken from tissue left after surgery Anna Anderson had undergone.
Now, I was very impressed when someone on this forum (it's the bottom reply here http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=13419.msg84775#msg84775) said that the tissue would have to be from the specific part of the body (intestine or whatever) to match what was taken--in other words, it would eliminate the fear of someone having faked the test by just taking any tissue from anyone...well, presumably from someone in the Polish family suspect as being hers. I would be even more impressed if this hair and the tissue from the operation proved to be from the same person--as they were taken at different times and places, under different circumstances, etc. Incidentally, the hair in the museum didn't look to me like hers--it appeared blond, and I understood her to have dark hair--but perhaps it somehow lost color over the years.
A bit unrelated, but a great example of how things should be done was in the case of Bonnie and Clyde. Authorities immediately called in family members to positively identify them, then displayed their bodies to tens of thousands of visitors, unlike Booth or Anastasia, who were shot in secret and then buried for years. The person asked to identify Booth was a doctor who had met him perhaps once. On sight of the body, he declared it wasn't him, took a closer look and said it was after all, fueling years of survival speculation. You don't see too many cases of people coming forward to claim they were the real Bonnie and Clyde!
Now, I was very impressed when someone on this forum (it's the bottom reply here http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=13419.msg84775#msg84775) said that the tissue would have to be from the specific part of the body (intestine or whatever) to match what was taken--in other words, it would eliminate the fear of someone having faked the test by just taking any tissue from anyone...well, presumably from someone in the Polish family suspect as being hers. I would be even more impressed if this hair and the tissue from the operation proved to be from the same person--as they were taken at different times and places, under different circumstances, etc. Incidentally, the hair in the museum didn't look to me like hers--it appeared blond, and I understood her to have dark hair--but perhaps it somehow lost color over the years.
A bit unrelated, but a great example of how things should be done was in the case of Bonnie and Clyde. Authorities immediately called in family members to positively identify them, then displayed their bodies to tens of thousands of visitors, unlike Booth or Anastasia, who were shot in secret and then buried for years. The person asked to identify Booth was a doctor who had met him perhaps once. On sight of the body, he declared it wasn't him, took a closer look and said it was after all, fueling years of survival speculation. You don't see too many cases of people coming forward to claim they were the real Bonnie and Clyde!
What's yours?