and only Gavril, Tatiana & Vera survived.
What happened to George???
George survived too.
In 1929 he moved to New York. He died of peritonitis in 1938 and is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery, Maspeth, Long Island.
1)And, as noted elsewhere on the forum, Princess Vera Constantinovna later had his body moved to the cemetery at Novo Diveevo, in Nanuet, NY.
See this post in Part I (which is now locked) of this thread:
http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=408.msg261931#msg2619312)I would also like to comment about another post in Part I:
http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=408.msg267905#msg267905 Maybe there isn't enough for a whole book. Just because someone is royal or born to a fascinating family doesn't make their own life intrinsically book-worthy. Her life in the United States, for all its length, was fairly uneventful and quiet. There was a decent amount in the book on her family, Gilded Prism.
'Thus began [the escape from Russia] a nomadic existence, moving to Belgium before finally settling in her mother's native Germany, where she lived through the difficult years' of WW2....'For many years, as she later admitted, she was haunted by the 'monstrous' events of the Revolution. 'For many years,' she recalled, 'I used to have the same dream, as if I stood with my back to a pit and they were going to shoot me...my awakening was not less terrible than the dream itself, because I was constantly afraid to open my eyes and see that they had really come to take me to the execution.' After WW2, fleeing the Soviets, she 'faced the harsh truth that she belonged to no country' as she only had an ambiguous Nansen passport which gave her the ability to travel but no protections of statehood. Despite this, she refused to take the protection offered to her by various European countries, feeling herself Russian. She moved to the US in 1951 and lived in New York where she was very active in charities but regarded some of the emigree community, and some of their pretensions, with skepticism. She didn't have the 'nostalgic idyll' of many emigrees but rather the memories of her childhood and her lost family. The 'constant stream' of visitors she regarded with some amusement and also found it rather 'trying'. She didn't care for those who would 'speak in awe-struck tones' of the late Imperial family--she would often relate stories of their humanness and misbehavior. For her they remained her 'childhood playmates, not distant figures for adoration'. She also regarded the canonization of the Romanovs, including her brothers and uncle, as a 'puzzling, peculiar' move by the Church.
Princess Vera Constantinovna's attitude toward the glorification of the New Martyrs of Russia was neither "puzzling" nor "peculiar", but the above statement most certainly is both.
True, Princess Vera did not overly romanticize her family's past, or Imperial Russia, but she fully supported the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad's decision to glorify the New Martyrs of Russia.
It was a day she longed to see, and which she was grateful to have lived to see.
If she truly found the act of glorification "puzzling" or "peculiar", she certainly would not have taken such an active part in the preparations for it, nor have attended all the church services relating to it.
She could have simply remained at home.
As it was, she attended the Vigil service on the eve of the glorification, standing front and center when the new icon was solemnly unveiled and the first hymns in honor of the New Martyrs were chanted.
She stood through the very long Liturgy the next morning, received Holy Communion, and was present at the festive banquet held afterwards.
Years later she still spoke of how much it meant to her.
Here is a letter which she sent to us in 1986.
It is written on her stationery from the Tolstoy Foundation, and bears her crowned monogram "BK".
Among other things, she states:
"...By the way, I did not see his [
Constantine's] godsons at the glorification of the New Martyrs — there were almost more people present than at Pascha, and we, the family, were standing up front. Without assistance, I would not have been able to to up to the Cup [
to receive Communion].
I will never forget those days, which I had so been awaiting. And coming up soon is the 1,000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus'..."
