Anastasia's Supporter Among the Forum Members

[helenazar]

PM me an address, Helen, and I'll send you a copy, I have several from the different productions.

Thank you, just did  .

[annaanderson]

The problem here is this. AA YOU believe that the "other" evidence is of the same reliability or value as the DNA. The problem is that it IS NOT. PERIOD. ALL of the other "evidence" is either subjective (one person says yes but another says no) or unreliable because it can not be corroberated independently.

The DNA on the other hand IS 100% accurate, reliable and has been proven by extrinsic evidence to be so.  

The ONLY SINGLE REASON that YOU think the other evidence is of equal weight or value is simply BECAUSE YOU WANT IT TO BE SO.  We have YET to see anything from you to the contrary, despite being asked. The only response you ever come up with is literally "because I say it is"...and sadly, that is not good history, not critical reasoning, and really not much more than a fairy tale.

But if the DNA was not her's then it dosen't matter. Now you will tell me that the tissue was not switched because members of the hospital said it couldn't and I will say they could have been in on it and you will say there was no motive. I will say there was. The truth is, none of us can know for sure. It cannot be proved or disproved that the samples were of Anna Anderson Period.

[annaanderson]

"I remember that my father had blue eyes, blue eyes of a depth that was unmatched by any in Russia. I had three sisters. We called the one just older than I "Little Bow-wow" to tease her. My oldest sister Olga was gifted at the piano, but disliked practicing. And Aunt Olga was my favorite of Papa's sisters! Each week she would bring us into her home in St. Petersburg, and we would have a lovely tea --- much better than the ones that were served at home. Even Mama used to complain about those teas, saying everyone else's was so much better."

But there is nothing about that out of the ordinary. She did indeed say things that were intimate details of Anastasia's chlildhood during her encounters with Gleb Botkin and Felix Dassel.  

[annaanderson]

 They could find her body right now and prove once and for all that AA wasn't AN but it wouldn't do any good.They would still never believe it was true.

 

No, if they did find the body I would not believe Anderson was Anastasia, but the fact is that they have not. And therefore they will not.

[helenazar]

I might be able to persuade the college to host a forum on Imperial Russia or something.
 

I bet quite a few would be interested if they did something like this! Maybe they can invite some Russian historians, authors, etc.,  as speakers.  I wonder how difficult it would be for the university to arrange something like that...

Simon, I just remembered that you also recently did a Tudor era play (with Cardinal Wolsey in it), so it sounds like you often do historical plays. I wish I lived closer to NC so I could go see them all!

[Louis_Charles]

Dear RA,

As usual you make an impassioned plea, and I respect the motivations behind it. If anyone's free speech was being abused I would even go to the barricades with you. But really ---  I haven't seen anyone banned from the board because they believed that Anna Andersen was Anastasia. I have seen people reprimanded or suspended because they were insulting in their postings, which is a different matter entirely.

Martha Jefferson Hospital is not Nero's Rome. It is a going concern in the city of Charlottesville in the state of Virginia, attached to a very important University. Historians can malign Nero or Richard III as much as they want, free from fear of legal action, but it is not a threat to point out that if someone impugns the security/safety/procedures of a modern hospital, such hospital will send a threat of legal action his/her way in short order. Think of MJH as the Ford Motor Company. If you want to say publicly that Ford makes unsafe cars, you had better be able to produce evidence that it does, or Ford will shortly own your house (maybe not yours; I have no idea what the situation is if this occurs outside the United States, but they would certainly get mine).  If you want to say that Martha Jefferson Hospital is unprofessional and post it on this board,  then yes, you need to produce evidence. All I was pointing out to Annaandersen is that such a statement without evidence is libel. I am not crushing his right to say anything. I am merely pointing out that ideas and statements have consequences.

Just reposting something earlier, with the relevant part boldfaced. Before I skedaddle, I do have one more question. Why do the Andersen supporters not answer the objections raised that have nothing to do with the DNA? She made factual mistakes in the early days (these are usually chalked up to lingering effects from the head wound and unspecified trauma), and while some of her answers may have satisfied Gleb Botkin and Felix Dassel, they did not Pierre Gilliard and several Romanov relatives. If you hang everything upon her memory, how do you deal with her mistakes?

Regards,

Simon

[Forum Admin]

But if the DNA was not her's then it dosen't matter. Now you will tell me that the tissue was not switched because members of the hospital said it couldn't and I will say they could have been in on it and you will say there was no motive. I will say there was. The truth is, none of us can know for sure. It cannot be proved or disproved that the samples were of Anna Anderson Period.

Of course we can know for sure... The hospital did not even KNOW IT HAD HER SAMPLE for years!! It was only when people wanting to prove AA WAS AN asked the hospital that they even started to look for it. We know the people who worked there at the time, they HAVE NO CONNECTION WHATSOEVER TO ANYONE INVOLVED, further, the sample was stored under a code number not a name. PERIOD. Your naive belief in some "possiblility" is based on your desire for it to be true, rather than any reality.

Look,  I don't know for certain that the moon orbits the earth, I haven't been in outer space to look for myself, so just like you I could say "its possible" it doesn't. That does not alter the reality...

I can say "It is POSSIBLE that an unknown fishing boat picked up a dozen survivors of the Titanic, who went on and lived unknown lives in New Foundland and left children and grandchildren today..." its POSSIBLE...but is it real? no.

Your "possiblity" has been demonstrated as IMPOSSIBLE, and when questioned to demonstrate otherwise, you produce NOTHING, zip nada zero.

In law there is a maxim "res ipsa loquitor" the thing speaks for itself...LOOK AT THE REALITY. It speaks for itself that there was no switch. PERIOD and END OF DISCUSSION.

TO QUOTE BILL MAHER..."NEW RULE!"

THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER DISCUSSION OF A TISSUE SWITCH OF ANNA MANAHAN'S SAMPLE IN ANY SECTION OTHER THAN "HAVING FUN" UNLESS AND UNTIL GENUINE AND VERIFIABLE EVIDENCE TO SUBSTANTIATE IT IS PRESENTED ALONG WITH IT. PERIOD.  We have an obligation to maintain academic integrity in this site.

[Rachael89]

If discussing the idae of a tissue switch in the "having fun" section would we have to ridcule the idea or would we be able to treat it seriously   ?

Best

Rachael

[Forum Admin]

discuss it however you want over there, I don't care. It just will NOT be discussed out in the serious discussion section unless and until genuine evidence accompanies it. The "what if" theories, like "what if Nicholas lived..." and "what if there was a tissue switch" all will stay in Having Fun as just that. Having fun discussing theories about things that did not happen.

[etonexile]

Yet the reason I assume the DNA was not of Anderson was because of her memories. You assume the memories were not authentic because of the DNA. There is no evidence to support either side, therefore you are in the same boat as I.

There IS more than a little evidence to support the DNA theory...for the sentient crowd...There is NO evidence for how AA/FS found her information....PROVE that it was all her memory...If you can...which you can't...

I wonder if the AA supporters aren't just contrary....they LOVE to be in the minority....to fight against the majority....

[Rachael89]

Thanks FA that makes it clear now, I just wasn't sure.

Rachael

[annaanderson]

 they HAVE NO CONNECTION WHATSOEVER TO ANYONE INVOLVED, further, the sample was stored under a code number not a name. PERIOD. Your naive belief in some "possiblility" is based on your desire for it to be true, rather than any reality.

 

No, you don't know this for sure. You don't know who was connected to who, nor do you know that someone in the hospital could not have looked up the number of AA's tissue. You are very naive as to what people are capable of doing. I don't simply "desire" it to be true. That's the dumbest remark I've heard from you. Sometimes people have reasons to believe what they other than wanting or needing it to be so. The alien remarks are getting old and they are unprofessional and it's sad you must use this as a reason as to why a switch could not have occured.

[annaanderson]

Just reposting something earlier, with the relevant part boldfaced. Before I skedaddle, I do have one more question. Why do the Andersen supporters not answer the objections raised that have nothing to do with the DNA? She made factual mistakes in the early days (these are usually chalked up to lingering effects from the head wound and unspecified trauma), and while some of her answers may have satisfied Gleb Botkin and Felix Dassel, they did not Pierre Gilliard and several Romanov relatives. If you hang everything upon her memory, how do you deal with her mistakes?

Regards,

Simon

Could you possibly provide an example of her making a mistake in her memories with a source other than word of mouth.

[Louis_Charles]

Certainly.

From the testimony of Charles Sydney Gibbes in THE HOUSE OF SPECIAL PURPOSE, Stein and Day, NY, 1975.

"I shewed (sic) her six photgraphs which I had taken with me. She looked at each and shook her head and indicated that they meant nothing to her. These pictures were actually of the rooms in which the Grand Duchess Anastasia had lived, of the pet dog with which she had played, and of the teachers who had taught her."

"Thinking of Anastasia the sweep as she had appeared to him one morning long ago, Father Nicholas (as Gibbes was eventually known) put a single question. Did the claimant remember what she wore when she came into his classroom at Tsarskoe Selo after a fancy-dress ball the previous night?
"Yes," she (Andersen) said without hesitation. "I was a columbine . . . wasn't I naughty?"
That, for Father Nicholas, was the end of another Anastasia."

Both quotes are taken from p. 147.

"Mme. Tchaikovsky has affirmed that I limp. Had I been dead, it might have been difficult to prove, but being yet alive and happily in full possession of both my legs, I am able to limp only in the imagination of Mme. Tchaikovsky."

p. 134.

First book I pulled off the shelf, and I will look for more in the morning.

Regards,

Simon

Oh, and I want to be very clear. I do accept that Anna Andersen gave correct answers. I don't think that even her most ardent supporters would maintain that she gave only correct answers. My point is that "memories" in and of themselves are inconsistent, and subject to impeachment (cf. the discussion in Klier and Mingay's The Search for Anastasia about Andersen's knowledge of Anastasia's nickname 'Schwibs').  I assume you are familiar with the Lovell biography of Andersen, in which he details how in her last decade she endorsed the idea of the "fifth" daughter, Alexandra de Graeff? That she dismissed the idea of the massacre in the cellar? The bodies hadn't been unearthed then.

If you are right, and Andersen was Anastasia, then she was inconsistent, to say the least.

[AGRBear]

Certainly.

From the testimony of Charles Sydney Gibbes in THE HOUSE OF SPECIAL PURPOSE, Stein and Day, NY, 1975.

"I shewed (sic) her six photgraphs which I had taken with me. She looked at each and shook her head and indicated that they meant nothing to her. These pictures were actually of the rooms in which the Grand Duchess Anastasia had lived, of the pet dog with which she had played, and of the teachers who had taught her."

Simon,  do you know how old GD Anastasia was when she was last in the rooms in the photographs and is there a way we could know what he showed her so we could see for ourselves what AA failed to reconize?

Another things that has poped into my head,  why would Gibbs have to resort to photographs, when, he, afterall,  having been a tutor, must have hundreds and hundreds of little stories the real Anastasia would have been able to answer and a fake could not, so why use photographs to prove she was not whom she claimed?  Or are there hundreds of other stories to which Anna Anderson failed to answer correctly and  these are just a few examples of why Gibbs knew Anna Anderson could not possibly been GD Anastasia?

"Thinking of Anastasia the sweep as she had appeared to him one morning long ago, Father Nicholas (as Gibbes was eventually known) put a single question. Did the claimant remember what she wore when she came into his classroom at Tsarskoe Selo after a fancy-dress ball the previous night?
"Yes," she (Andersen) said without hesitation. "I was a columbine . . . wasn't I naughty?"
That, for Father Nicholas, was the end of another Anastasia."

Both quotes are taken from p. 147.

I am cuirous,  what was she?  And, who was dressed as a "columbine"?

"Mme. Tchaikovsky has affirmed that I limp. Had I been dead, it might have been difficult to prove, but being yet alive and happily in full possession of both my legs, I am able to limp only in the imagination of Mme. Tchaikovsky."

p. 134.

Did GD Anastasia have a limp?

First book I pulled off the shelf, and I will look for more in the morning.

Regards,

Simon

Oh, and I want to be very clear. I do accept that Anna Andersen gave correct answers. I don't think that even her most ardent supporters would maintain that she gave only correct answers. My point is that "memories" in and of themselves are inconsistent, and subject to impeachment (cf. the discussion in Klier and Mingay's The Search for Anastasia about Andersen's knowledge of Anastasia's nickname 'Schwibs').  I assume you are familiar with the Lovell biography of Andersen, in which he details how in her last decade she endorsed the idea of the "fifth" daughter, Alexandra de Graeff? That she dismissed the idea of the massacre in the cellar? The bodies hadn't been unearthed then.

If you are right, and Andersen was Anastasia, then she was inconsistent, to say the least.

I will have to depend on Simon and others for the "inconsistent" and as well as the "consisitent" which deals with Anna Anderson and her claims of being GD Anastasia.

AGRBear