by Laura Rose
I shudder to recall the hacking of limbs, the attempted incineration. The men who performed this work were evil yet also buffoons. They could not get this charnel house work right. The Romanovs seemed indestructible—the Imperial bodies only charred slightly on the fire. In the end, they left the evidence you have now—and it is ample, I am sure, to establish what occurred there. The burned corsets, with only the metal stays intact—six, for the six dead women. You have, I know, the melted belt buckle of the tsar and the deformed-by-flame lead toys that his son Alexei always carried in his pockets.
The corpse of a small dog was found, a bullet wound clean through its tiny skull. This puzzled me, as I knew the Romanov dogs. In fact, I had already secured the tsarevich’s spaniel, Joy—I had hidden him in an upstairs utility closet at the Ipatiev house, with bowls of food and water, until I could return to rescue—you say “steal” him. I had discovered this poor animal, flattened under the sofa in the drawing room, where it had some instinct to hide while the massacre occurred. I had heard it whimper and moved it before any of the kill squad saw it… “Be silent,” I begged the dog, “or we may both be killed.” I confess, I was distracted the remainder of my time there, by listening for a whimper or bark, but the dog had the sense or was sufficiently shocked to remain quiet.
The other dog, the French bulldog with its extended lower jaw and jutted teeth, Ortino, who rushed forward to protect its mistress, Tatiana—that dog was shot and killed on the stair, as I reported, and bayoneted and included in the truck filled with corpses. This dog produced later from the depths of the Four Brothers mine during your investigation appears to be the miniature Charles spaniel, the lap dog, Jemmy, that was the personal pet of Anastasia Nikolaevna. I have no idea how this little dog was shot, or who shot it, or how it was found in the mine.
I watched as the bodies were thrown into the pit. The mine was filled with frigid water, while the temperature of the air was uncomfortable, hot. Mosquitoes buzzed and chomped into us. Many men chose to stand near the bonfire, for this reason—the smoke and flame discouraged all but the most aggressive insects. My arms and forehead still show welts from the fierce insect bites I received that night…but I digress, the shaft was cold; it descended below the permafrost. One thing I can say, the cold probably contributed to the preservation of the dog.
I can testify personally, that the bodies, while horrifically mangled, stabbed, and in some cases, mutilated, were also preserved by the cold mine water.
I know this fact because the next day, I was the man chosen to be roped and lowered into the pit, when Yakov Yurovsky made his decision to exhume the corpses. I was selected for the simple reason that I am small, and lightweight. I am especially narrow through the hip and shoulder. If difficulty were to be encountered by the dimension of the mine, I would have the most accessibility, and my size would allow me to exit, as I did, holding a body in my arms.
I did not have to ask Yakov Yurovsky why this exhumation was necessary. We all knew that the secrecy of the site was compromised. “We have to move the corpses to a better hiding place,” I heard him tell Goloshchokin.
Goloshchokin cursed. “It’s your head if Moscow is angry at how this was done”.
As all culprits do, they fell out amongst themselves. Yurovsky blamed Ermakov, his drunkenness. Everyone who witnessed the executions knew, apart from the unholy inhumanity, this was badly done. There were so many witnesses; no one could believe the burial site at Four Brothers could be secure. It was ridiculous, really. The mineshaft had not even been deep enough to take all eleven bodies—arms and legs poked out from the top.
I can tell you more about that Four Brothers mineshaft than anyone, as I was the single person to descend into it. The upper bodies were removed. They were wet and half-frozen, half-thawed, like bad meat. These first bodies were laid out on the grass. Much fuss was made as they spread the corpse of the former tsar on the ground. He was short but powerfully built. No one had realized how muscular he was. The truth was, in this postmortem, the soldiers were more impressed with their sovereign in death than in life. Tsar Nicholas had well-developed back, arm, and leg muscles. They even turned him over, and admired his firm buttocks.
Yurovsky stopped this—not because of any moral instinct but because they were wasting time. It was at this point that ropes were tied on me, as a harness, and I was lowered into the pit.
I had no stomach for this but I knew I would be shot if I refused. I was no sooner down the pit than I bumped into a body. I shut my eyes, and grasped whoever this poor person was, seized them round the waist in a posthumous embrace, and called to be raised to the surface.
This process I repeated nine times, until the last body was exhumed. The truck that had carried them here was stuck in the mud—this was a problem that would recur. We used carts to transport the corpses. There was a rutted road through the woods. It was hot, exhausting work. Somewhere along the way, Yurovsky himself fell, and severely injured his leg. This did not improve his disposition, which by now was as foul as the page he had used to wipe himself.
You want to know where they are buried now. I cannot tell you, even under pain of death, the exact location. All was confusion for two more days and nights. We arrived at their final resting place by accident. The truck had been extricated from the old road, but no sooner did it go off the road into another part of Koptyaki Forest—we were headed for the deepest mine in the woods some miles away—than the truck sank in the mud. There was the terrible sound and smell of the spinning tires, the hideous sight of the corpses, now stiff and locked together, as if in a monument to the murder. They would have to be moved en masse. Rigor mortis is a force stronger than the grip of living persons.
Yurovsky had to improvise. We buried them near where the Fiat failed. The ground was a bog, and we dug, in frenzy, through that last night. By dawn, we had thrown them in a shallow pit and smoothed the ground over, set railroad ties across the surface, and tamped it down.
Two bodies—one of the young girls and one that was still recognizable as Alexei, Yurovsky burned, as an experiment, and that failed—those two wet corpses hissed and steamed. We had to bury them at the site of the fire pit. The other nine corpses all went in the big pit, under the railroad ties. The place is a meadow…I swear I would lead you to it if I had any hope I could retrace my steps from those confused and hellish nights.
I cannot. Shoot me if you must. I am not keeping Yurovsky’s secret—I just don’t know the exact location. It is in Koptyaki Forest, not far from the road itself. The missing valuables? I confess that I did gather up the clothing and effects of one of the grand duchesses from her room at the Ipatiev house. I did this immediately after the executions, in the confusion that followed.
That night, I met, by prearrangement with another guard—do I have to give you his name? Am I dooming him as well? All right. It was Peter. Peter Malakovich—he had deserted. He committed no crimes against the Provisional Government, the Whites, or the former Imperial family. He had a sentimental interest in one of the grand duchesses. It was at his request I fired that mercy shot. He did not want her to die in a prolonged agony. You should approve. I did not kill the Grand Duchess Marie Nikolaevna Romanova—I spared her the tortures that awaited. She could not have survived. You should award me a medal, now that you are back in control. He had a sentimental interest in her diary, her clothing. I gave him what I could include in one bundle. I do not consider this a theft.
Yes, I confess the theft of the spaniel. When I returned to the Ipatiev house, a cleanup was taking place. Men had dusted the floors with sawdust to absorb the “lake of blood” as Ermakov called it. They had scrubbed the walls, and tried to destroy as much evidence as possible. Yet the pattern of gouges and bullet holes on the back wall of the death chamber suggested the exact formation of how the family had stood for their imagined photograph.
The dog Joy had been let out of the room where I had secured him, and he ran back and forth on the second floor, whimpering for his mas
ter, the little boy, the tsarevich. So, yes, I confess, I picked up this poor animal, and carried him a short distance to my own home, gave him a good meal of a ham shank and a bowl of water. The dog ate better than my brother and I ate that night.
After almost a week, the dog calmed but was still frightened and shaking in the middle of the night, the hour of the executions. I kept the dog in my own room, at the foot of my own bed. We shook together. He allowed me to stroke his fur, and use a grooming brush. He was beginning to adjust, as was I—when your troops retook the city and arrested me.
I did not believe I had committed a wrong in saving this poor animal. I made no attempt to conceal him—as you know—he was sitting in the yard of my house, when the Whites returned to Ekaterinburg … When a soldier recognized him, I said, “Yes, he is Joy, the tsarevich’s pet.” I had grown attached to the dog but I handed him over, along with all I had taken—the boots, the watch, the camera, the diary. I intended, throughout, to do only good and no harm.
You would shoot me for this? Will someone feed the dog then?
Mikhail Letemin, signed, August 14, 1918.
FOOTNOTES:
A brief news item appeared in the Ural Times, August 16, 1918.
“Mikhail Letemin, aged 17, former guard at the House of Special Purpose, was executed by firing squad, August 15, 1918 for crimes against the provisional government.”
The execution was witnessed by Peter Malakovich, aged 18, who was detained and then released.”
The tsarevich’s spaniel, Joy, survived and was transported to England. The dog lived a long life but was said to startle easily and suffer from bouts of melancholia; Joy now lies buried at Windsor Palace.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS: MARIE ROMANOVA’S BODY FOUND
Interest in the Romanovs, always intense (the prominent website the Alexander Palace Time Machine has one million visitors a month), is reaching new heights as the centenary of the massacre approaches. July 17, 2018 will mark one hundred years since the Imperial family was slaughtered in the parlor/cellar of the Ekaterinburg Mansion named the House of Special Purpose.
On April 30, 2008, international front page news stories hailed the resolution to the mystery that riveted the world for ninety years —what happened to the two missing bodies of the Imperial Romanov family? The fact that two bodies were unaccounted for gave rise to persistent rumors that the tsarevich and one of the grand duchesses, either Anastasia or Marie, had somehow survived the massacre in the cellar/parlor of the Ipatiev Mansion. There was difference of opinion as to the identity of the missing sister—Marie or Anastasia?
One sister’s body, along with her brother Alexei’s, had been missing since the massacre in 1918. The tsar, tsarina, and three of the sisters were discovered in a mass burial pit in 1991 in the Koptyaki Forest outside of Ekaterinburg. The absence of one sister and Alexei from that mass grave gave rise to much speculation and has been considered one of the world’s “great mysteries” for almost a century. Now, the mystery appears solved. All last summer, working under the same humid conditions as her killers did when they buried her corpse, amateur sleuths digging at a location near the exhumation site, the infamous “Pig’s Meadow,” found the bits of charred, severed bones of a nineteen-year-old girl, believed to be Marie Romanova. The scientists put the remains back together to reassemble the young woman’s body that was hacked apart, doused with sulphuric acid, and burned in July 1918.
After exhaustive DNA testing, the human remains discovered in the Koptyaki Forest are now positively identified as belonging to the Tsarevich Alexei, thirteen, and the third daughter of the tsar, the Grand Duchess Marie, nineteen.
It is anticipated that the bodies of the last of the missing Romanov children will rejoin their parents and three sisters in the Romanov crypt at the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in St. Petersburg within the next few years.
This current international news story will continue to draw attention to Marie Nikolaevna Romanova for the next several years, as there is an ongoing debate between the Russian Church and State regarding the recognition and burial of the remains. In the end, Marie Nikolaevna Romanova and Alexei will have an elaborate funeral, and be at last laid to rest in the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The remains of Marie Romanova were identified through DNA samples taken from blood relations of the Romanovs, including Prince Philip, of England, husband of Queen Elizabeth II.
On July 17, 2018, the centenary of the massacre shall be marked throughout Russia and the world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Laura Rose is a writer of Russian descent whose career as a playwright has often taken her to Russia, where her play, Devichnik, has been produced at the great historic theatres of Russia, including the Imperial Theatre of the Tsars, the Alexandrinsky in St. Petersburg, the Russian Drama Theatre at Ryazan, and The Russian Drama Theatre in Northern Ossetia. The play has been performed in Moscow at the Moscow Drama Theatre and has been on National Tours since 2003. During her travels through Russia, she was able to visit many of the sites mentioned in this book, including the Alexander Palace and the Ekaterinburg Church on the Blood and the two Romanov burial grounds. She is a self-described Romanovphile and has enjoyed her addiction to their history for over sixteen years.
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