Dear AGRBear:
I thank you for your kindness and heads-up regarding the "pack"....it is beyond me to think that the people who talk on this forum warrant any proof, as they are just neophytes when it comes to the Russian Church and the political influence it has had over the centuries.
Please understand that my information is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a story, I have seen the pictures and papers and the jewels first hand which has proven everything she has ever told me. I have to say though, that she never told me anything with an attitude of superiority, but more with a sense of humility. She truly has the grace a descendant of a family so noble would possess.
She once told me a story her Grandmother told her, of how she, her mother, step sister and little brother had escaped the fate that befell the rest of the family. As she told me what her grandmother described to her, she would cry at her bravery and at the same time, you could see an underlying pride in her eyes.
She told me that once they stood holding hands in her Grandmother's living room looking out over a newly fallen snow. Although, she said it was beautiful, it made her Grandmother cry. She said the next morning she woke to find her Grandmother in her usual routine, making the bread she had seen her make many times before.
She saw her Grandmother cross herself and kneel before the table as usual, but that when she started to knead the bread, she all of a sudden started to beat it with an anger she had never seen before and it frightened her. When she called to her, her Grandmother didn't answer at first but then realizing she was there, stopped pounding the table of dough, keeled again in front of the table and embraced her.
She told me her Grandmother held her so tight, she thought she would never let go, but instead she rocked my friend in her lap and told her how lucky she was that she would never have to face the horrors she went through and how happy she was to be her Grandma.
My friend said that her Grandmother didn't tell her then but years later when she was older and could understand, just what the four of them went through, when they fled and the nightmares her mother (Natalia) would have and the horror and fear she would see in her eyes when she awoke. She said she would scream in her sleep and wake up shaking and rock in her bed, or what was used for a bed. And that all the while telling the tale, she said her Grandmother always had this far off look in her eyes, as though she was re-living those things all over again.
I was always of the opinion that these were not stories at all, as when they were told to me, they included such detail as to warrant merit in their telling.
