[The following is in relation to the disposal of the bodies of the Romanov family following their tragic execution in a basement at the hands of the local Bolsheviks.]
It was 6-7 a.m. when the party reached an abandoned gold mine nearly three meters deep. Iurovskii ordered the corpses undressed and burned.
When they began to undress one of the girls, they saw a corset partly torn by bullets: in the gash showed diamonds. The eyes of the fellows really lit up. [I] had to dismiss the whole band… The detachment proceeded to strip and burn the bodies. Alexandra Fedorovna turned out to wear a pearl belt made of several necklaces sewn into linen.
[…]
The diamonds were collected; they weighed about half a pud [8 kilograms]… Having placed all the valuables in satchels, other items found on the bodies were burned and the corpses themselves were lowered into the mine.
What indignities were perpetrated on the bodies of the six women must be left to the reader’s imagination: suffice it to say that one of the guards who took part in this work later boasted that he could “die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress’s ---------.”
Source:
Pipes, Richard. "The Murder of the Imperial Family." The Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1990. 778. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Ogonëk, No. 21 (1989), 30-31.
Deposition of P. V. Kukhtenko in Sokolov Dossier I, dated September 8, 1918; omission [Empress’s --------] in the original.
Further Reading:
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