ROMANOFF MILLIONS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 110, 31 December 1931, Page 6

ROMANOFF MILLIONS

RUSSIAN ROMANCE WOMAN WHO CLAIMS TO BE DAUGHTER OF MURDERED CZAR LEGAL STEPS IN ENGLAND LONDON Russian Royalists all over the world have for long been split into two camps over the mystery woman, Madame Anastasia Tsehaikowsky, who maintains that she is the Grand Duchess Anastasia, youngest daughter of the last. Czar, and the only member of the Russian Royal Family to scape the butchery of the cellar of Elcaterinburg. The fierce eontroversy which has raged round her is likely to be revived by the announcement that she is about to lay definite claim to several millions, the personal fortune of the murdered Czar, which - is said to be deposited in certain London banks. " The legal wheels, it is stated, will shortly be set in motion in this country. Meanwhile, this amazing claimant is staying in a se.cret place in Germany whither she was smuggled in dramatic circumstances from the the United States a week or two ago. Secret Hlding Place Soon the curtain will be rung up on a fresh act in one of the most intriguing identity dramas of modern times. In New York funds are now being gathered to enable Madame Anastasia Tsehaikowsky to launch a definite claim to the Romanoff fortune, and a prominent American 'awyer is engaged in the. necessary preliminaries in this country. The world first heard of Mms. Tsehaikowsky a eouple of years after ihe war, when a German policeman Iragged from death in the River Sprc.e a young girl who was only brought back to consciousness after considerahle difficulty. It was then obvious that her mental and physical condition was at such a low ebb ihat thero was no alternative but to 5end her to an institution where she vvould have the most skilled medical attention.

The girl appeared to have no triends, but when she had recovered mfficiently to be questioned she gave her name as Anastasia von Tsehaikowsky, and asserted that she was born in St. Petersburg in 1901, and ..hese facts were duly recorded in the rnoks of the institution. Then one day, speaking haltingly in broken German, she declared she was really the Grand Duchess Anastasia and the last surviving child of the ill-fated Czar and Crazina, having escaped the awful fate of the other members of that imperial family in a manner at once. miraculous and romantic. In the cellar of the villa in Ekaterinbuig, where .that- dread drama was played out, she had, she said, been both shot and bayoneted, and remembered no more until she found herself one of a bundle of bodies piled in a country cart, jolting its way along a forest road. The fact that life still remained in the girl's body was discovered by one of the guards, a Pole named Tsehaikowsky, who toolc pity on her md dragged the unconscious girl into the surrounding woodland.

Reached Roumania Deserting his companions, the Pole made a perilous journey to the vieinity of his village home, and in a 'ittlo forest cottage the girl was secretly nursed back to some degree of strength. Then, after many privations, the two succeeded in reaching Roumania where, however, the man was at length traclced down by Bolshevik agents and killed. The girl then embarked on a series of wanderings, which ended in the dramatic rescue from the waters of the Spree. • The girl's story created intense interest in Czarist circles in Germany and France, and many influential people who had known the real Princess Anastasia during her girlhood were convinced of the genuineness of Mme. Tschaikowsky's claim. Among these was Mrs. William B. Leeds, formerly Princess Xenia Georgiovna, the princess's cousin, who had become the wife of an American millionaire. Mrs. Leeds backed her belief by taking Mms. Tsehaikowsky back with her to the United States and installing her in her luxurious Long Island home, pending the establishment of her claim.

Physical Likeness Mme. Tschaikowsky's facial and physical likeness to the princess was eertainly very striking. Apart from the similarffy of features, there were certain deformities of the feet of Anastasia faithfully reproduced in tho mystery woman; while on her shoulder was a small white scar corresponding to one which the princess was known to bear, where a mole had been cut away at the instance of the Czarina. Further, there was a scar on the middle finger of the left hand which the princess was known to have, the mark of an injury received through crushing her finger in a carriage door in childhood. Some two years ago the supposed princess, who is said to suffer from neriodical imcontrollable fits of temper, a legacy of her suffeinngs and privations, quarrelled with Mrs. Leeds and left her home for that of Miss Annie Jennings, the daughter of a former director of the Standard Oil Company. Later, however, she had to go into a sanatorium, all her expenses being paid by Miss Jennings, and eventually she recovered her health sufficiently to undertake the present trip to Europe. It has only just transpired that she has left the United States secretly, and her supporters in America declare that it is necessary for her present whereabouts in Europe to be kent a close secret in view of the activities of her enemies and of repeated ..attempts which have been made to assassinate her,