Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [206]
Yurovsky: “The whole procedure, including the checking [feeling pulses and so on] took about twenty minutes.”
The bodies had to be carried through all the downstairs rooms to the front entrance, where the truck was waiting with the driver Lyukhanov.
Pavel Medvedev got the idea of carrying them out on sheets, so as not to drip blood in the rooms. He went upstairs, to the family’s rooms. After he collected the sheets in the grand duchesses’ room he grabbed a cover and wiped his hands, which were spattered with the tsar’s blood—and threw it into the corner. That was the cover they later found—from his, Medvedev’s, bloody fingers.
Pavel Medvedev: “We took the bodies out on stretchers made from sheets stretched between shafts taken off the cart in the courtyard.”
Strekotin: “The tsar’s body was carried out first. The bodies were carried out to the truck.”
On the bottom of the truck they laid a cloth, which had been in the storeroom covering the family’s belongings. Now it was protecting the floor of the truck from the tsar’s blood.
The tsar was carried out first in the wide marital sheet. They carried out the head of the family, Then they brought his daughters.
Strekotin: “When they laid one of the daughters on the stretcher, she cried out and covered her face with her arm. The others [the daughters] also turned out to be alive. We couldn’t shoot anymore—with the open doors the shots could have been heard on the street. According to the comrades in the detachment, the shots had been heard at all the posts.”
When the slain grand duchess rose up with a shout on the sheet—and her sisters rustled on the floor—horror gripped the detachment.
At that point they still did not know the reason for their “strange vitality,” as Yurovsky put it. It seemed to them that heaven itself was against them. Again the Chekists did not err. Ermakov set the example. He had no fear of heaven.
Strekotin: “Ermakov took my bayonet from me and started stabbing everyone dead who had turned out to be alive.”
Yurovsky: “When they tried to stab one of the girls with a bayonet, the point just would not go through her corset.”
The Livadia Palace, the children’s balls, the luxury of the Winter Palace, the anticipation of love—it all came to an end on a dirty floor, to the panting of a former convict. In impossible pain from a dull bayonet—it all came to an end.
——
Remember: When they were carrying her out to the truck, the shot young woman turned out to be alive, as did the other daughters—even though they had checked their pulses!
It is easy enough to write that they “checked,” but how could they really have checked—in that smoke, in that horror, in that fever amid the pools of blood?
Again they were carrying bodies to the truck. Before carrying them out, they collected the jewels and precious objects. As it says in Sokolov’s inquiry, Strekotin immediately began searching those lying there and removing jewels.
Naturally enough, though, Strekotin did not write about his own efforts.
Strekotin: “While the bodies were being removed, several of our comrades began removing various items from the bodies, like watches, rings, bracelets, cigarette cases, other things. When Comrade Yurovsky was informed of this he hurried back downstairs. We were already carrying out the last body. Comrade Yurovsky stopped us and suggested we voluntarily give back the various items we had taken from the bodies. Some gave it all back, some just part, and some nothing at all.”
Yurovsky: “Then they started carrying the bodies out and loading them into the truck, which was spread with a cloth (so the blood would not flow). At this point the stealing began: I had to have three reliable comrades guard the bodies while the carrying was going on. Under threat of execution, everything stolen was returned (a gold watch, a cigarette case with diamonds, etc).”
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