Claimant of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna

[jeremygaleaz]

Speaking of Helen, she's been posting on the board, so I assume she'll show up here soon to tell us about her scientific credentials.

Helen is in Russia right now. But she is well qualified to make the statements she does, and is often one of the only people that keeps this "survivors" thread from becoming a complete joke. And I'm not just saying this because she's my friend. Her intelligence and common sense remarks are often needed here.
If she choses to post again, perhaps she will show you her scientific credentials, if she feels it's worth the bother.  

[Annie]

Thanks Jeremy, that's so interesting! It's so good to hear about another claimant for a change! Thanks for posting!

And for those who do not remember Helen, she is a brilliant lady who is full of very good, helpful information. If you read most of the threads on the survivor forum from just a few months ago, you will see her kind and intelligent posts explaining the facts. I do hope she will return and post again.

[jeremygaleaz]

 











Eight years after the letter was received from the nun, and the editors of this publication still had the photos. The editors passed these photos to forensic services to investigate the resemblance. They compared her photos from 1934 and 1956 to determine that the features stayed consistent with age. When compared to the photos of Anastasia, they did not find consistency. But when they used a computer to compare the photos, they got different results. They compared the size of the eyes, bridge of the nose, size of the ear, and shape of the top lip. They found 88% consistency and 12% inconclusive.  

I thought this was very interesting, since there are people who give alot of weight to the "similarities" between the face and ears of AA and AN.

[jeremygaleaz]

She also knew that British George V asked for some floor boards from the murder room and got them as relics. At the time, these things were not public knowledge. The authors found some people who remembered this inmate. They did not think she was an impostor.  

Does anyone know if the statement about George V asking for the floor boards of the murder room is true?

[stepan]

Does anyone know if the statement about George V asking for the floor boards of the murder room is true?

I have never heard of this and haven´t seen it in all the literature about the imperial family so I don´t believe it´s true. If I remember correctly according to Massie this woman,Nadezhda Ivanovna Vasiliyeva, once confessed to be a merchant´s daughter from Riga.  It is also said that she wrote letters to king George V in German which a daughter of the tsar would not have done. I know  the Russian paper "Top Secret" wrote about  the case several years ago. But I don´t think there was more info than what we know. But it´s an interesting story and it´s said that she was completely sane exept for her claim to be G D Anastasia.

[jeremygaleaz]

I have never heard of this and haven´t seen it in all the literature about the imperial family so I don´t believe it´s true. If I remember correctly according to Massie this woman,Nadezhda Ivanovna Vasiliyeva, once confessed to be a merchant´s daughter from Riga.  It is also said that she wrote letters to king George V in German which a daughter of the tsar would not have done. I know  the Russian paper "Top Secret" wrote about  the case several years ago. But I don´t think there was more info than what we know. But it´s an interesting story and it´s said that she was completely sane exept for her claim to be G D Anastasia.

Thanks. I had never heard this before either, so I was wondering if anyone else had.

Writing to the King of England in German. NOT a point in her favor.

But I wonder what did happen to her relatives in Riga. Did they "leave her to her career as AN" just like the Schankowsky family? Or did they assume she was dead?    

[jeremygaleaz]

http://sovsekretno.ru/2002/04/13.html.

The article is back online along with pictures of the claimant. If anyone wants to try to post the photos, feel free. For some reason I can't seem to get it to work.

[Laura Mabee]

Just an update on this article. You can now see the whole article in all its glory on my website. I scanned the whole darn thing, So all illustrations are there  

[LisaDavidson]

Thank you, Laura. This afternoon me and my family went to a flea market, because the weather was so nice today, and I started rifling through one of the many bins of LIFE magazines I saw, and lo and behold, at the bottom of one of the bins I found the Oct. 18 1963 issue with the article on this woman. It was VERY interesting, and I read it in the car. One of the things that amazed me most was how her account of the execution was so similar to Yurovsky's, (right down to the chair being brought into the cellar room for the Tsarevich) yet she had no way of knowing about his Note, since it wasn't brought from the archives until Radzinsky came across it.
She also resembled Alexandra in this pic:
Eugenia:
Alix:

and funny how her 'rescuer' was also named Alexander, as was Anna Anderson's rescuer.

Abby: I find Eurgenia Smith one of the most interesting of all the clamants. I feel entirely sure she was not ANR.

However, her story, as I have pointed out before entirely fits the known evidence in this case in a way no other one does.

What does this mean? As you point out, the Yurovsky note, which corroborates much of the tale, was not in the public domain at the time. And, the Yurovsky note and other Bolshevik sources as they differ with those known sources (Pavel Medved, for example) is nearly the only corroboration with Smith. Smith is the only source who explains the two missing bodies in a manner different than Yurovsky. What are the possibilities for the authorship for Smith?

1. Member of the Imperial Family. (Unlikely, although maybe a short term survivor?).
2. Yurovsky or a member of the Lenin clique trying to stir the pot among emigres?
3. A very lucky fabrication that just happens to have the number of missing bodies exactly correct and identified? (And the only one published in the West prior to the infamous Note.)
4. The rescuer "Alexander" himself. We know there were a number of Imperial Army officers in Ekaterinburg at the time.

What we do know about Smith after her brief publicity in the 1960's:

1. She remained in the Eastern United States
2. She had a small group of supporters.
3. She refused free DNA testing when it was offered.
4. She died in the 1990's.

[stacey]

I'm so glad someone brought this claimant up--I've only seen her mentioned VERY briefly in a couple of books on the Romanovs but these are the first pictures I've seen of her--and I have been dying to know more about this "mystery claimant"!! I agree that the pictures of the claimant don't exactly scream "Anastasia!!!" at me but who knows??--after years in some godforsaken Soviet "mental hospital/prison" I probably wouldn't look much like ME!!

[RealAnastasia]

Nevertheless I must said that Magdalen Veres is the less reliable "Anastasia" I ever knew. If you go to the site of her family "The Great Romanov Deception" you'll notice easily why.

RealAnastasia.

[Robby]

Granny Alina is biographed two,  .

[Margarita Markovna]

Sorry...No books about this claimant. The only ones who were even biographed were Anna Anderson and Eugenia Smith-Smetisko.

Nevertheless I must said that Magdalen Veres is the less reliable "Anastasia" I ever knew. If you go to the site of her family "The Great Romanov Deception" you'll notice easily why.

RealAnastasia.

What's the URL for this site?

[Anastasia_R]

She doesn't even remotely RESEMEBLE Anastasia! Okay,thanks though!

[Nastya]

if you look at the forhead of Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Visilieva you can easily see a scar and anastasia had a scar the same size and the same place