In the evening Yurovsky walked into our sitting room startling us. Jemmy, my little dog, charged at him, snarling. She had never acted like that before. I called her back, but it was too late. Yurovsky grabbed her by the neck and carried her away, saying, “Who brought this dog up here?”
Yurovsky reappeared as if nothing had happened and began talking, though no one heard what he said. Our only thought was, “What became of Jemmy?” No apologetic attitude crept into his affability. He continued to talk and to toy with my frightened stupefaction. Then he walked to Alexei and sat on his bed as if they were on the most intimate terms. He pulled out a revolver and handed it to brother saying, “Do you want to see an American automatic?” “No,” replied Alexei. No doubt all the warning given against the man leaped into the boy’s mind. He did not want to take it but Yurovsky thrust the weapon into his hand. “Is it loaded?” asked Alexei. Father stood up next to Alexei and said, “Please leave my son alone, he is not well.” Ignoring Father’s request Yurovsky answered, “It is not loaded now, but it will be.” Alexei became frightened as he held the pistol and Yurovsky regarded him with amusement.
At last Yurovsky went out. Mother with trembling hands picked up a book as we gathered around while Father read aloud. He let the book open itself and read: “Let us take courage and be strong, look straight with our spiritual eyes up to Christ.” Then again he read: “Do not fear those who kill the body, but those who wish to kill the soul.” It may not be exact but as I remember it went like that. His voice was hardly stronger than a whisper. We could hardly hear him over the drunken shouts that shrieked through the house from the guards’ quarters. Mother bent her head close to the window and listened in bewildered absorption. Her cheeks turned somewhat red, she looked around and smiled. Finally she said, “I hear the beautiful Ave Maria so clearly, just as if it were being played in this very room.” We strained our ears again but could not hear what Mother claimed she was hearing.
I tried desperately to lose myself in the quotation which Father had just read, but Jemmy kept coming to my mind. I was afraid they had killed her. Father said, “Most of the Russian people usually are kind to animals.” Those were comforting words, but was Yurovsky a Russian? I was depressed with the thoughts about Jemmy, added to the off-key singing of the guards downstairs. Mother also noticed that they seemed unusually noisy this night, and they were drinking entirely too much. Father laid the book down and said: “The best thing we can do is to go to bed and forget about it.”
That evening as Father crossed the hall he saw several extra guards examining some rifles in the middle of the hall near the doors between the office and the stairway. When they saw Father, they lowered the butts of their rifles to the floor. Father knew every make of gun. He said, “These are the high-powered, German army rifles holding usually five cartridges; they can be fired singly or in rapid succession.” Olga replied, “I remember at the hospital, soldiers used to come with their bones shattered and their flesh mutilated. We always knew the type of gun which inflicted such wounds. Russian guns caused clean wounds.” Then Father added, “If Wilhelm had enough poison, he would have poisoned all the bullets.” This was the last time he mentioned the Kaiser’s name. It was four or five hours before the tragedy.
Father knew the Kaiser was obsessed with the thought of victory at any cost, victory even if it meant the sacrifice of the Kaiser’s own godson, my brother, whom he had vowed to protect according to our religion; also the sacrifice of his own cousins, my parents, and their daughters, too, for whom on his last visit in 1912 he had professed so much love. All this must have been on his conscience. Yet Holland gave refuge to this man who enslaved Russia and his own country as well.
These German guns which Father saw were frightening but we could not believe and it did not even come to our minds that Wilhelm, bad as he was, would permit the assassination of our family. We knew that Germany had demanded that our family should be delivered to Moscow unharmed; apparently the German High Command had learned of the character of our jailers.
Later I heard that the assassination was not known to Wilhelm until afterwards and that the German High Command was responsible, as well as some of our Allies, for all the catastrophe in my land. They had sent, or permitted, these men to come to Russia in order to bring about a revolution. They knew that if the old government should recover power it would not be pleasant for those responsible for the terrible killings and robberies they had caused in my country.
After my escape I was told that, when the Kaiser heard of the killing of our family and of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth and some of the other Romanovs, the Kaiser was beyond himself. He cried bitterly for hours, saying: “I have lost my best friend. Nicky was my best friend. I loved them all. My hands are clean. Why have the other cousins permitted such crimes to take place? My conscience is clean. I did not know what they were doing. I had nothing to do with it. It was Mirbach and Ludendorff, supported by those Nicky believed were his friends.”
In the last hours at Ekaterinburg Father spoke and his words are still fresh in my mind. He said: “It is the end of Russia, but of the Allies, too. They have dug their own graves and soon they too will lie in them, and Germany will pay retribution for her deeds of treachery. No one can escape consequences, no matter what they do to avoid them; sooner or later they will have to pay. The taste of blood is an epidemic and it will soon flow all over the world.”