AA and "this night" in the cellar.

[RealAnastasia]

Hi!:

       I was wondering about AA "story", and I have a little question to ask here...Since I have not so many books to read in this issue in my country, I wanted to ask this question to you all: Wich was AA story about the massacre night in the Ipatiev house cellar   ? I read in Blair Lovell book (I don't like it, but it is the only one I could get about AA ) that she never told  the whole story  to anyone, but little sketches of it, and sometimes, totally different stories. We also know that she even told to Summers and Mangold that there never was any IF murder, and that she had been rescued along with her mother and sisters.

   I 'm searching for all   different stories that AA told to different people about HOW the IF was murdered, and HOW she (assuming Anastasia's identity) was injured, before being rescued. I'm not meaning how she was rescued, for she tell it pretty well, even if it is a barely convincing story...

   LITTLE (BUT IMPORTANT) NOTE: I'm not discussin here if AA was FS or Anastasia. It's not an "identity thread" ,not one to read how fool I am asking questions about pretenders since we have DNA proofs. It's only to know what AA told about "this awful night" being this fake, semi-fake or not fake at all...But, well. I suppose this note will be in vain, and all people will use it to discusse DNA, FS , GD Anastasia and such...

  I know, that Bear will like this thread!  

RealAnastasia.

 

[etonexile]

RA...don't put yourself down....we are sort of like a family in here...trying to understand issues....making answers to questions as best we can....some folk are trouble(OK...ME from time-to-time)....but that's how it is in families...we squabble and squawk....but I think we respect each other....

[Lanie]

Well, don't look at Blair Lovell's book for anything "concrete" regarding Anna Anderson, period--since she was senile, and Blair Lovell made up a LOT of the stuff in the book.

[lexi4]

Good question and could be a fun topic RA. I will look through my books, but I seem to recall that AA never really discussed what happened in the cellar.

[RealAnastasia]

You are right, Lanie: when I read Blair Lovell book I 'm always very dissapointed. My personnal idea is that this poor guy was as crazy as Anna Anderson herself was. Whoever she was (even Anastasia), she was a crazy lady...But, of course Blair Lovell was worse.  :-/ , and this book is not an historical one. I can't read it as a serious source.

          I use to laugh when I read that Blair Lovell said he isn't an "Anna Anderson cultist". He wanted to be a critical historian! The poor man.  

          RealAnastasia.

[Lanie]

You are right, Lanie: when I read Blair Lovell book I 'm always very dissapointed. My personnal idea is that this poor guy was as crazy as Anna Anderson herself was. Whoever she was (even Anastasia), she was a crazy lady...But, of course Blair Lovell was worse.  :-/ , and this book is not an historical one. I can't read it as a serious source.

 Â          I use to laugh when I read that Blair Lovell said he isn't an "Anna Anderson cultist". He wanted to be a critical historian! The poor man.  

 Â          RealAnastasia.

I read that after I read Nicholas and Alexandra since I thought it would be about the REAL Anastasia... at least I had a good fun time reading it, laughing my head off!  

[Annie]

You are right, Lanie: when I read Blair Lovell book I 'm always very dissapointed. My personnal idea is that this poor guy was as crazy as Anna Anderson herself was. Whoever she was (even Anastasia), she was a crazy lady...But, of course Blair Lovell was worse.  :-/ , and this book is not an historical one. I can't read it as a serious source.

 Â          I use to laugh when I read that Blair Lovell said he isn't an "Anna Anderson cultist". He wanted to be a critical historian! The poor man.  

 Â          RealAnastasia.

It is sad, but I agree.

But we don't have to  pity her too much, because in the end, Anna Anderson got what she wanted, and that's more than the Romanovs or most of us will ever get. There is a quote of FS that someone said she always said, she didn't want to be buried in a one horse town, she wanted to die a famous actress.

And so she did

[AGRBear]

I have a lot of books but just a few on Anna Anderson, since I've never have taken her as a serious claimant.  In  fact, I am  still wondering if she may. also,  have been someone other than FS.

I don't recall AA giving us through various people, or directly on any interview any details about that night accept the part about being placed in a cart.... and there were two brothers who rescued her.

Sometime ago,  we talked about the list of guards and if there were two brothers with our without the name Tschaikovsky and Penny Wilson gave us a list.   The list  no longer is posted, but he seems there were one or two sets of brothers and two who were cousins.

Annie, I think it was,  created a thread about AA's story of treking from Ekakterinburg to Budapest in the time period in which AA claimed to have traveled  and if it could have been accomplished.

http://hydrogen.pallasweb.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=anastasia;action=display;num=1108091391;start=0#0

Let me pull out some of those books and see what I can find.

AGRBear

[AGRBear]

Summers and Mangold who did talk to AA wrote p. 237:

"...The greatest weakness to her claim, from the very start of her story in Berlin, has been that she failed to explain convincingly how she alone survived the massacre of her family in Ekaterinburg."

p. 239

"...True to form her own comments on the fate of the family remain an enigma....

"In 1974, when we were with in in Virginia, she suddenly exlaimed:  "There was no massacre there.. But I cannot tell the rest."


AGRBear

[AGRBear]

James Blair Lovell's ANASTASIA, THE LOST PRINCESS p. 59:

"ANASTASIA maintained for years that she was left wounded and  unconscious.  As a result, she explained, she could never remember the events leading to her rescue..  All we can speculate is that someone whom she called Alexander Tschaikovsky--perhaps one of the guards at the Ipatieve House, perhaps one of the members of the group from the local soviet who met the truck later-- noticed she she was not dead.  In the confusion of the horror-filled hours, he managed to pull her into some underbrush, where she reamained hidden from view until he and his brother Serge could come back for her later."

On p. 67 the story about he escape on a cart is given.

AGRBear

[AGRBear]

ANASTASIA by Peter Kurth p. 33 who doesn't say that AA had told him but a friend,  who's name Kurth doesn't give from what I see at a glance:

"...it was an accident...a very bad accident."  She paused.  "I don't know how to say exactly... But I fainted, everything was blue, and I saw stars dancing, and there was a great roar."

"Why were my dresses all bloody?"  she asked finally.  "Everything was full of blood... Yes, it was then..when the end came."

"For Anastasia, "the end" meant the night of July 16, 1918...."

"When a police inspector once remarked that she had been wearing soldier's boots on the last night in Ekaterinburg [p. 34], she cried out in sheer exasperation, "What is that man thinking of.  It's crazy.. We weren't supposed to be going anywhere, just into another room..."

Evidently, it was Baron von Kleist who drew up some kind of story and rescue.

And that seems about all we know until 1929 p. 35:

"...Anastasia could not recall how long her family had been held..... but she well remembered their helplessness and he "constant dread" they all had felt."

Jumped over to p. 37:

Here is what AA said to "her companion" [again just hearsay]:

"Everything was so sudden.  It all happened at once.  It came so quick, nobody could think.... It was late in the evening.  We were all in bed.  They just came and told us to get ready.  We had to dress and follow them.  We knew nothing---were just ordered to come along... I do not know what they told my father.  We were just ordered to go--to follow the soldiers.  Nobody could believe what was going to happen, and to this moment I do not know.  There is just one horrible picture in my mind.  I do not want to talk about it.  I must not think about it.."

The way this is written,  I can't quite tell who Anastasia's companion was when she told this story.  On p. 36 Kruth mentions Zinaida Tolstoy....  Perhaps someone else can make this point clearer.  

Kurth's web site:
http://www.peterkurth.com/ANNA-ANASTASIA%20NOTES%20ON%20FRANZISKA%20SCHANZKOWSKA.htm

AGRBear

[delle]

I am new on this board, and generally find most of the
posts to be interesting and informative.

However, many posts about Anna Anderson as a 'crazy
old lady' are not based in fact, and often unbalanced.

We do not know what AA wanted most in life. We might
assume that she did not want a life of loneliness and
alienation. To assume she was 'crazy' because of the
DNA reports is absurd. How could anyone maintain a
charade for most of their lives, with so little gain? Now
how could a person with significant mental disturbance
do so? It is unlikely.

(I don't know who AA actually was)

Significantly traumatic events are seldom remembered
in the chronological manner that memories are encoded
and retrieved. Much will be missed in a recalling. and
the event is so devastating on a mental, emotional,
and phsiological level, that cognition is often imapired.

Delle  

[etonexile]

With all respect...the DNA of AA did NOT match "ANY" known relation of the Czarist family...but it did match the DNA of known relations of FS(I feel like having this info put on t-shirts for convenience)....A poor,sad,mad woman with....'NOTHING" in her life except the charade that she was....someone....anyone....of interest and importence is what kept FS/AA going all those years....plus a few folk willing to indulge her delusion...

[AGRBear]

Welcome Delle.

It's always nice to hear a new voice.

AGRBear

[Georgiy]

Whoever she was, i think she must have survived some kind of trauma - physical or mental, but not the trauma of the night of 16/17 July 1918 in a cellar in Ekaterinburg.