The Box

[Laura Mabee]

The town was Kitchener, Ontario.

neva

By the way, the picture showed the box (a valise) closed, not open.

Hey Hey... Kitchener is not a small town. I grew up there. If you want to see a small town, go to the place I am living right now Peterborough  

And yes, Since I've raded those Library's like there is no tomorrow, the do have a copy of "The House Of Special Purpose" at the Forest Hights Library. Was this the library you were at Neva?

Kitchener has amazing collection of books on the Romanovs I was pleased to find. Here is a link to our library web-page so you can see what we carry
http://www.kpl.org/

[Anastasia]

does anybody know where i can find that formal statement by i think metropolitan vitaly or one of the priests or metropolitans of ROCA or ROCOR that said that the box was indeed at st. iov's and that the remains were built into the walls?

[Anastasia]

mmmmmmm just kidding i found it

http://www.monasterypress.com/Royal.html

[lexi4]

Thanks for posting that site Anastasia  

[lexi4]

The book HOSP does say that: "This box, which once belonged to Her Majesty the Empress, now contains all that was recovered at the mine shaft from the remains of the burned bodies."
How is that possible? The book also refers to another, larger box which was "said to contain proof of German complicity in the murder. Both boxes wer lodges for safe-keeping with the British Consul."
What happened to those boxes? I am especially interested in the larger box. Does anyone know? Also, I am wondering if the contents of the smaller box, which supposedly were the remains of the IF including 13 drops of blood, were among the items sealed in the walls of St. Job the Much Suffering in Belgium Church.

[Abby]

Hi Lexi. We discussed the myserious 'box' a while ago in the missing bodies' thread and the 'did any family members survive' thread quite a while ago. The box gets so much attention I think it is good that it got its own 'thread!

you can scroll to the bottom of this page:
http://hydrogen.pallasweb.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=anastasia;action=display;num=1074956237;start=149#149

and right at the top of this thread:
http://hydrogen.pallasweb.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=lastdays;action=display;num=1102980672;start=150#150

i think the conclusion was that no DNA or anything was left in the box, and no evidence that Anastasia or Alexei lived through the murder.

[AGRBear]

 Just a few extra notes on the journey of "the box":  Miles Lampson  recieved the "relic" box from Gen. Diterikhs who had taken it by force from Sokolov.  Miles Lampson in turn handed it over to the American consul-general in Siberia.  The American took it to Harbin.  There Sokolov "caught up with it" and took it to England and to King Georg.
 
It is heresay, but Mlies Lampson told a friend that King Georg didn't seem to know what to do with the "relic" box and asked Lampson to do something with the  "relic" box and remove it from his presents.
 
Miles Lampson's son-in-law, Lord Eliot  said Lampson did take it home for a time and thought the box did not contain Romanov remains but that of one of the imperial servants and thus may explain the lack of interest of King Georg.
 
Miles Lampson became Lord Killearn.
 
Miles Lampson was the "charge' d'affaires in Siberia" whatever that means and in another book I have he had the  position as "British High Commissioner of Siberia" in April of 1918....
  
AGRBear
 

[lexi4]

Thanks Bear, I had read that too.

[lexi4]

Hi Lexi. We discussed the myserious 'box' a while ago in the missing bodies' thread and the 'did any family members survive' thread quite a while ago. The box gets so much attention I think it is good that it got its own 'thread!

Thank you Abby. That was very kind of you and I did read the posts. I still wonder what happened to the larger box that was supposed to contain evidence of Germany's involvement in the execution of the IF. That was also mentioned in HOSP.

[AGRBear]

HOSP?

AGRBear

[AGRBear]

Hi Candice! I beleive you are talking about the bones found by Sokolov. These were different than the bones found in 1979 in a mass grave by Russians Avdonin and Ryabov. When investigator Sokolov arrived at the mine in 1919 he found some bones beleived to be around a bonfire site and put them in a box with some other remains he found, and took the box to Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich (Nicholas II's uncle) but he did not want them. And he took the box to Dowager Empress Marie, but beleiving her son was still alive, she refused to look at anything to do with their death scene. So the box was put in the hands of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and, according to Robert Massie (I am getting all this from "The Final Chapter") they still have the box today. Others say that the box has dissappeared altogether. But Massie says that the Church won't let anyone look in the box, and only a few people have seen it.

These are the bones that "disappeared". DNA tests were conducted on the bones found in 1979-- nine skeletons found in a mass grave in the Koptyaki wood.

Interestingly, if that box does contain human remains from a site apart from the mass grave, they could be the remains of bodies destroyed in a bonfire...Alexei and Anastasia's. But if the church has the box, they should hand it over to investigators!!!

I just found Penny's post...I am sorry to be taking up so much space on this board with an old response and I will remove it if necessary, but I couldn't link to just one post, so I guess I will just copy it here:

When Sokolov finished packing it, the box contained:
 
*42 pieces of bone not identified as human
*the severed finger (often described as Alexandra's, but more likely to be a man's -- a colleague identified it as Dr Botkin's)
*Dr Botkin's false teeth
*two small slices of skin
*thirteen "drops of blood" taken from the Ipatiev House and saved in vials (probably scrapings of dried blood)
*several more vials of "greasy earth" which Sokolov thought might contain melted human fat, though this idea is a matter of contention, because the "greasy earth" was gathered at the Four Brothers while the alleged cremations took place miles away
*various pieces of charred clothing, broken buttons, destroyed jewelry and other small artifacts, like those believed to have been the occupants of Alexei's pockets (coins, silver paper, etc)
 
In 1998, Metropolitan Vitaly of ROCOR announced that all the contents of the box were in the walls of St Job the Sufferer in BRUSSELS -- this is in direct contrast to the word of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich who declared in 1971 that the human remains were taken from the box some short time after the box came into his possession in 1931.  He was silent on the final resting place of the human remains, as is his daughter Maria -- and rather understandably so -- but it is most likely that they were buried privately in St Genevieve de Bois as is sometimes suggested.
 
Continuing in 1971, GD Vladimir said that the remaining items in the box were lodged in a bank vault in Paris, where Nazi occupiers broke into them in the 40s, on a search for Imperial treasure.  Nothing appears to have been stolen, however, for when the box and its contents were turned over to the Church of St Job the Sufferer after the War, it looks like everything that Sokolov placed in the box was accounted for -- the Church took photographs of every item in the box and made a careful inventory list before placing them in a larger box and sealing them in the wall of the Church during its construction.  MP Remy, a German film producer (and all-round fabulous man  ) pulled off a stellar piece of research in contacting the Church and requesting that they open their files for him to see the listing and the photographs.  Surprisingly, they complied with this, allowed him to make some copies, and confirmed that there were no human remains within the wall of the Church.  This makes absolute sense, since it is not Orthodox practice to treat human remains in this manner.  Greg and I have seen with our own eyes Remy's copies of this information.  So what is walled up in the BRUSSELS Church are the following items: icons, buttons, hooks-and-eyes, burned pieces of cloth and some pieces of glass vials.
 
As for DNA testing the human remains, there might not be much point in trying:  The fat may or may not be human -- remember that this an area heavily trafficked by forestry workers, soldiers and peasant farmers and fishermen, all of whom frequently built campfires -- and its doubtful that it is the Romanovs' if it is because it was retrieved miles away from the alleged burning site.  The blood scrapings came from the house, and could therefore belong to any one of the victims, and not necessarily the missing children.  The two pieces of skin are a possibility, but only experts might know what sort of state of decomposition they might be in after eighty-five years.  And remember the matter of contamination -- this might in and of itself render the skin unusable in terms of DNA matching.
 
As for the 42 pieces of bone:  The could never be identified as human, and I think that they might represent either Ortino's body or the chicken dinners that were brought out to the guards at the mine -- or some combination of both.

[lexi4]

HOSP?

AGRBear

Sorry. House of Special Purpose.

[Clemence]

The book HOSP does say that: "This box, which once belonged to Her Majesty the Empress, now contains all that was recovered at the mine shaft from the remains of the burned bodies."
How is that possible? The book also refers to another, larger box which was "said to contain proof of German complicity in the murder. Both boxes wer lodges for safe-keeping with the British Consul."
What happened to those boxes? I am especially interested in the larger box. Does anyone know? Also, I am wondering if the contents of the smaller box, which supposedly were the remains of the IF including 13 drops of blood, were among the items sealed in the walls of St. Job the Much Suffering in Belgium Church.

In 1941 the German Nazi Army and their Spanish allies occupied the palace. During their stay they made a sensational discovery. Where the arcade meets the bedroom wall they found a secret safe concealed beneath the fabric. During the 25 years the Palace had been a museum no one had found this secret hiding place. This is amazing considering the repeated numerous searches in the palace for Romanov treasures conducted by the Soviet Government over the years. Everyday the palace was open, thousands of people walked just a few feet from the secret safe, yet no one suspected its existence. Yet, the invading German army seemed to have known it was there. When the Soviet Army re-took the Palace they found the strong box in the wall, but it had been emptied. What did the Germans find in the vault? Was this a secret hiding place for Romanov jewels? No one has yet revealed the secret.

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/bedroom.html

I was thinking about this and while I cannot see why would there ever be a german complicity to the murder of the imperial family, maybe some kind of message could have been the reason why the germans knew where to find the safe in the empress's bedroom in WWII?

Just a thought ...

[Clemence]

No ideas about what happened to what the Nazis found and took from Alexanderpalace during the war?

[TimM]

Sounds like a lot of bunk to me.  Conspiracy theory stuff.