 |
| On the
night of 16th to 17th July, the former Tsar, his wife and
children, together with their four retainers were
executed. Ten years later, Yakov Yurovskiy,
superintendent and the chief of the execution, would
write an account of the execution at the request of
Pokrovskiy, a professor of history: On July 16th, a coded telegram came from Perm, which brought an order to execute the "R-vs" [Romanovs]. On the 16th, at six in the evening, Philipp G-n [Goloschekin] arranged to carry out the order. At midnight, a car was to come to take away the corpses... The truck did not come at 12, it came at half-past one. This caused a delay. Meanwhile, preparations were made: Twelve men with revolvers (including six Latvians) were selected to carry out the order. One of the Latvians refused to shoot the girls. When the automobile came, everybody was asleep. Botkin was sent to awake the others... The Romanovs did not suspect anything. The superintendent [Yurovskiy implies himself] sent for them personally and led them down the stairs to the basement. Nickolas carried Alexei in his arms; the others carried cushions and various small things. Having entered the empty room, Alexandra Feodorovna asked: "Well, isn't here a chair? Can' I have a seat?" The superintendent ordered to bring two chairs. Nickolas had Alexei seated in one of them, and Alexandra Feodorovna sat down in the other. The superintendent ordered the rest of audience to form a line. When they did so, the squad was called in. When the squad came, the superintendent told the Romanovs that in view of the fact that their relatives in Europe continued the intervention against the Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee decided to execute them by shooting. Nickolas turned his back upon the squad, his face to his family, then turned to the superintendent with a question: "What? What?" The superintendent repeated the verdict quickly and ordered the squad to get ready. The squad had been instructed beforehand who each of them was to shoot at. They were ordered to aim straight at the hearts to avoid too much bloodshed, and finish up the quickly. Nickolas did not say anything else. He turned to his family again, the others uttered several incoherent exclamations, and all lasted a few seconds. Then the shooting began which took two or three minutes. The superintendent himself killed Nickolas. Then, Alexandra Feodorovna instantly died ... Alexei, three of his sisters, the maid-of-honor, and Botkin were still alive, and squad had to finish them off. It surprised the superintendent because they had aimed straight at the hearts. It was also surprising that the revolver bullets ricocheted on something and hailed thick and fast all over the room...". Under the cover of night the bodies were loaded onto a truck and driven to a forest, where they were stripped of their clothes, thrown down an old mine, and covered with soil. For the next three nights, the murderers were restless as they continued the outrageous violation of the dead. Twice the bodies were unearthed until at last they were thrown into two specially dug graves, sulphuric acid poured over the corpses which were then covered with soil and large pieces of wood so that there were no traces of the graves. |