FIGHT OR FLIGHT RESPONSE

[clockworkgirl21]

Maria in particular was in fight since she was trying to break the storage room doors open, and when she couldn't she tried to wrestle the bayonets away.

[Lochlanach]

Maria in particular was in fight since she was trying to break the storage room doors open, and when she couldn't she tried to wrestle the bayonets away.

Indeed  she was the only one who seemed to have the awareness and courage to  attempt to open those doors when everyone else was understandbly cowering in the corners as the bullets flew - although that increased the risk of her being shot . Which she was .

[TimM]

I can only imagine the horror they all felt when they realized what was going to happen.

[JamesAPrattIII]

If the Bolsheviks had decided to take the IF for a ride so to speak and shot them at the 4 Brothers mine, which was their planned burial site. No one in the IF and Co would have had even a slight chance of escaping. There would have been too many guards. The IF would have been taken by surprise. Also Alexandra could barely walk and Alexei couldn't walk at all. As for the rest Nicholas was in good shape but he is probably going to shot first. Dr Botkin was old and sort of fat. I don't think he could have gotten far. OTMA were in fairly good shape but they are wearing white blouses that makes them good targets. as for the rest the men are most likely going to be shot first with Nicholas and Anna D was wearing a white dress or apron so would have been an easy target. lets face it survivors from Cheka executions were rare.

[TimM]

Except that those murderers were not Cheka.  From what I understand, they were just a bunch of hired thugs.

[JamesAPrattIII]

they are usually referred to as members of the Cheka who hired a lot of real nasty people. Yurovsky was later praised as a "Ideal Chekist".

Hendikova , Schneider and the 8 others who were murdered after Volkov escaped were killed in retaliation for the assassination attempt on Lenin. Thousands were executed. Including a number of ex-Tsarist era ministers:

Ministers of the Interior N.A. Maklov and A.N. Khvostov,
Assistant Minster of the Interior S.P. Beletski
Minister of War M.D. Belyaev
Minister of justice I.J. Shcheglovitov
executed outside Moscow 5 September 1918 along with 80 or 90 other people. Belyaev tried to escape but was soon caught and brought back. some one noticed that Fanny Kaplin who shot Lenin was an SR but all the people the Soviets killed off in retaliation who had no connection with the SRs or with the assassination.

[TimM]

Typical of murderous regimes to go on a killing spree in retaliation for an assassination or an attempted one.    Most of the people killed probably had nothing to do with the attempt, or only had minimal involvement.

[Ally Kumari]

Typical of murderous regimes to go on a killing spree in retaliation for an assassination or an attempted one.    Most of the people killed probably had nothing to do with the attempt, or only had minimal involvement.

Best example: Lidice. The fate of many was decided by a careless goodbye letter to a lover by a married man. In which there was one ambiguous line.

[TimM]

Exactly.  Most of the people in that village had nothing to do with the assassination of Heydrich.   However, the Nazis wanted to make an example of them, to show the world the cost of defying Hitler and his mooks, and the people of Lidice paid that price.

The Bolsheviks were no different.  They were cut from the same cloth, no doubt about that.

[JamesAPrattIII]

The book "A Lifelong passion" has Ryabov one of the killers accounts of what happened to Ella and the others:
They were woke up in the night told to get dressed then were blindfolded and had their hands tied behind their backs. Sergei m resisted knowing what was going to happen and was shot in the arm. After that he quit resisting and was blindfolded and had his hands tied behind his back like the rest.  They were then taken to the mine and  tossed in.  It looks like they had no chance at all to get away.

[Romanov_Fan19]

Didn't Sergei  hit  one of the Assassins in the face

[TimM]

It was cold blooded murder all the way.

[LisaDavidson]

I fail to see how Maria Nicholievna could have possibly run to a door and tried to get out of the murder room. I can double check with Greg King, but I don't recall ever hearing about this. The killers would have blocked the entrance door and they could scarcely have identified individual daughters under the best of circumstances, let alone in a smoke filled room.

[Jeremiah]

I believe Helen Rappaport in "The Last Days of the Romanovs" reports that Maria tried to get through the locked storeroom door. And that Tatiana tried to get away from Yurovsky as he approached her for the final shot, and then Olga also tried to get to her feet to get away from him.

I haven't read Rapaport's book. From where does she gets such details?

[GDSophie]

Maria in particular was in fight since she was trying to break the storage room doors open, and when she couldn't she tried to wrestle the bayonets away.

Anna Demidova tried to fight back with her pillow. After Anastasia got out of her initial shock she was also in fight as well as she too tried to wrestle the bayonets away. The Little Pair fought so hard to survive especially against men twice their size, it's heartbreaking really.

I fail to see how Maria Nicholievna could have possibly run to a door and tried to get out of the murder room. I can double check with Greg King, but I don't recall ever hearing about this. The killers would have blocked the entrance door and they could scarcely have identified individual daughters under the best of circumstances, let alone in a smoke filled room.

As much as I would have loved to believe Maria's inherited Romanov strength made her bulletproof and she was able to run to the doors and escape I doubt this happened. It's known that she ran to the other set of doors-that led to a storage cupboard?-to try and escape.

Except that those murderers were not Cheka.  From what I understand, they were just a bunch of hired thugs.

AND they were all-except for Yurovsky-drunk, including the group Ermakov had waiting at the burial site. If they were murdered outside instead of inside where there was nowhere to go some of them may have made it out of the clearing, but most likely would have been caught otherwise as their backs would have been exposed. OTMA and all the servants would have had a chance, Nicholas would have been shot by them all like what happened in the basement, Alexandra couldn't run and wouldn't leave Alexei behind. Botkin could have also been killed if he stayed to pick up Alexei and run. There's more possibilities of what could have happened if they had been shot outside. But I also read that the group waiting for them at the burial site where angry that they hadn't been brought to them alive as they wanted to have fun with the women before killing them. Disgusting thugs.