The Brutal Murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his Family

by Jonas E. Alexis and Michael Walsh

In the nineteenth century, the Tsar began to discover that Jews were fomenting revolution and began to establish policies in an attempt “to russify the Jews through conversionist assimilation.”^[1]

Historian Erich E. Haberer writes that this was largely forced assimilation, but Jewish scholar Benjamin Nathans seems to show that it was not forced; since the tsarist government wanted the Jews to integrate, they produced a number of academic programs that would be suitable to Jews. One of them was the university, “the setting in which selective Jewish integration achieved its most dramatic success.”^[2]

When the Tsar was governing Russia, Jacob Schiff plotted against the government, supplied millions of dollars to the Japanese to overthrow the Russian government, and called Russia “the enemy of all mankind.”^[3] Incredibly, Paul Johnson only mentions the idea that a number of Jews, including Jacob Schiff, sought to overthrow the Tsar’s government,^[4] and on another occasion mentions Schiff in a positive light.^[5]

Instead, Johnson tells us that during the tsarist government, “Everything was done to prevent Jews getting to university.”^[6] Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, the tsars were against subversive movements, in which revolutionary Jews played a major role. But they were not so much interested in marginalizing all the Jews in Russia, otherwise they would not have adopted programs for assimilation. Johnson’s History of the Jews seems to confirm this point; he writes that in Poland, Hungary, and Romania in the 1920s,

“The local Communist Parties had been largely created and run by Non-Jewish Jews…Jewish Bolsheviks were numerous in the Cheka (secret police), as commissars, tax inspectors and bureaucrats. They took a leading part in the raiding parties organized by Lenin and Trotsky to gouge grain out of hoarding peasants. All these activities made them hated.”^[7]

Leon Blum wrote in 1901 that “the collective impulse” of the Jews “leads them towards revolution; their critical powers drive them to destroy every idea, every traditional form which does not agree with the facts or cannot be justified by reason.”^[8]

Well, the fear that Jewish revolutionaries would want to usurp Russia’s traditional values had always been a concern of the tsars—not because the tsars were inherently anti-Semitic, but because the traditional government in Russia, which was built on the Western intellectual tradition, despised subversive activities such as Communism and Marxism.

Jews were about four percent of the Russian population at the turn of the twentieth century,^[9] yet they not only dominated the Russian Revolution but initiated the movement. Johnson writes, “It is true that Jews were prominent in the Bolshevik party, in the top echelons as well as among the rank and file: 15-20 percent of the delegates were Jewish.” He moves on to say,

“One list showed that, of thirty-one top Soviet leaders, all but Lenin were Jews [Johnson’s book came out in 1987; later documents revealed that Lenin was also a Jew]; another analyzed the members of the Petrograd Soviet, showing that only sixteen out of 388 were Russians, the rest being Jews, of whom 265 came from New York’s East Side. A third document showed that the decision to overthrow the Tsar’s government was actually taken on 14 February 1916 by a group of New York Jews including the millionaire Jacob Schiff.”^[10]

Yet Johnson plays down this involvement by saying that “these were Non-Jewish Jews.”191 Referring to the Revolution in an essay entitled “The Relentless Cult of Novelty,” Alexander Solzhenitsyn called it “the most physically destructive revolution of the 20th century” that sought “to sweep away all religions or ethical codes, to tear down, overthrow, and trample all existing traditional culture.”^[11] Jewish historian Steven Beller said,

“It is well known that the leadership of the socialist party in Austria before and after the First World War was heavily Jewish. This was also the case for the group of theorists collectively known as the Austro-Marxists, the most interesting group of political theorists to emerge from the liberal bourgeoisie in Vienna. Of the major theorists in Austro-Marxism only Karl Renner was not of Jewish descent.”^[12]

This is also true of those who conspired against the tsarist government. In fact, the U.S. State Department published a three-volume report in 1931 stating that Jewish-owned German banks conspired to send large sums of money to Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik luminaries to overthrow the Tsar.^[13]

Jewish financiers such as Jacob Schiff in the United States and Max and Paul Warburg in Germany poured millions of dollars into the Bolshevik movement. Schiff is said to have given $20 million dollars to the regime—a sum equivalent to billions of dollars today.^[14] Even The Jewish Encyclopedia calls communism and socialism Jewish phenomena.^[15]

The culmination of all this is the death of Tsar Nicholas II. This is where Michael Walsh’s in-depth analysis comes in.

Michael Walsh: Across Russia’s vast eleven time zones Church bells toll as the nation evokes the centennial of the horrific and senseless slaughter of Nicholas II, Tsar of Imperial Russia, his wife, their five beautiful children, and staff. Dubbed Azrael’s abattoir the ritualistic and racist nature of their family’s diabolical end is marked in countless ways in every village and city.

Before the outbreak of the 1914 ~ 1918 war Warsaw shops patronised by the Jewish community furtively sold greeting cards the message of which would be lost on most Gentiles. Each greeting card carried the image of the tzadik. This image depicts a Talmudic Jew with Torah in one hand and a white fowl in the other. The bird’s head is a facsimile of Imperial Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II. Below this image is the inscription in Hebrew:  “This is a sacrificial animal so is my cleansing; it will be my replacement and cleansing the victim.”

This message relates to the Yom Kippur atonement ritual in which the live sacrifice is swung about the head before being slaughtered by the shechita method; the creature’s blood being drained. This greeting card is a copy of American (Jewish) greeting cards first discovered in the United States in 2007.

The ritual slaughter of Tsar Nicholas II was the dream of many Jews. This curiosity is dismissed by palace media as being due to the Tsar’s alleged anti-Semitism. In fact, his anti-Semitism was hardly unique; many heads of state were outspoken in their criticism of the Jewish community.

Upon their being arrested the revolutionary Yakov Sverdlov ordered the slaughter of Tsar Nicholas II, his entire family, and all assistants. Regicide was a cherished ambition for this Jewish revolutionary. This is proven by the text of leaflets written by Yakov Sverdlov. These were published May 19, 1905, a date that marks the birthday of Nicholas II. The text on the leaflets: “Struck your hour, the last hour of you and all yours! This is a terrible judgment, the revolution is coming!”

The decision to massacre Russia’s Imperial family was taken by the Ural authorities. The decision is consistent with the stated demands of Yakov Sverdlov, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers ‘and Soldiers’ Deputies.

The massacre’s organisers and accompanying guards were militants involved in the organisation of the future Communist party, R.S.D.L.P. Its 1905 genesis was in the Urals, when the group was under the direction of Yakov Sverdlov. At the time of the slaughter, the aforementioned were the main participants in the massacre of the Romanovs.

Long before the Wall Street-inspired 1917 coup that delivered Tsarist Russia to mostly American corporate interests, Yakov Sverdlov and Bolshevik insurrectionists served prison sentences or were otherwise exiled in Siberia. Militant Yakov Sverdlov was exiled to Turukhansk as was Josef Stalin, Julius Martov (Tsederbaum), and Aron Solts.

The malevolent Yakov Sverdlov gathered around him the most aggressive and ruthless elements of this loose-knit association of brigands. Yakov Sverdlov was reputed to be pathologically sadistic. Such were the gratuitous cruelties inflicted on those he regarded as expendable that even fellow party members already accustomed to extreme violence were appalled.

On the eve of the 1905 Revolution and during his exile Sverdlov formed an organisation known as The Battle Squad of the People Weapons (BONV). This sinister terrorist group slaughtered indiscriminately in ways that would make today’s ISIS terrorists appear docile by comparison. The band’s victims included anyone thought to be in the pay or sympathetic towards Tsarist Russia.

The victims of Yakov Sverdlov and his band of brigands: Slaughtered at Ipatiev house. 1st row: Nicholas II and his family (Olga, Maria, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, Anastasia, Alexei, and Tatiana), surgeon to Tsar Eugene Botkin and Royal chef Ivan Kharitonov, maid Anna Demidova and the Tsar’s valet Colonel Alexei Trupp.

The band increased its wealth following constant attacks on banks, post offices, cash desks, trains and shops. “They were desperate murderers” writes Eduard Hlystalov who describes the marauders leader as ‘the frail bespectacled Yakov Sverdlov.’

Philippe (Shaya-Isay Fram) Goloshchyokin, personal and plenipotentiary ambassador of Yakov Sverdlov, dealt with all the gang’s organisation detail. The Ural region was soon to become Yakov Sverdlov’s personal fiefdom. The revolutionary placed those he considered loyal to him in government positions throughout the Urals region.

‘Under the protection of the Tsar’s personal bodyguards, the train carrying the soon to be martyred family departed Tobolsk on April 26, 1918, to arrive in Tyumen during the evening of April 27. On April 30 the train from Tyumen arrived in Yekaterinburg, where Vasily Yakovlev signed over a delivery of the Imperial couple and their daughter Maria to the Head of Ural Council Alexander Beloborodov.

As the Bolsheviks increased their hold on Russia confidence was such that it was decided that the children, the ill Alexei and his sisters Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia were to re-join their mother, father, and sister Maria in Yekaterinburg. The children left Tobolsk in May 1918. Tsarevich Alexei and his three sisters arrived in Yekaterinburg on 23 May 1918, accompanied by a group of servants and officials of the royal retinue.

On July 16, 1918, the day before the massacre, there arrived in Yekaterinburg a special train consisting of a locomotive and a single passenger carriage. The few other passengers included one person in the black attire of a Jewish rabbi with his face disguised. The rabbi was greeted by Shaya Isaakovich Goloshchekin and accorded with maximum respect as might a visiting dignitary. The rabbi was accompanied by protection of six soldiers. Upon being directed to the basement of Ipatiev house the rabbi traced cabalistic signs on the wall: “The Tsar sacrificed, the kingdom destroyed! About this notifies all peoples.”

Leading executioners of the Imperial family whose Jewish names appear in brackets. Left to right: Top (Yankel Solomon Movshevich Sverdlov) Yakov Sverdlov, Philippe Goloshchyokin (Shaya-Isay Fram Goloshchekin) and Pyotr Voykov (Pinhus Wainer). Bottom row: Alexander Georgievich Beloborodov (Vaisbart Yankel Isidorovich), Konstantin Myachin (Vasily Yakovlev) and Georgy Safarov (Voldin).

Yakov Yurovsky supervised the Imperial family’s assassination. He was responsible for administering the coup de grâce and afterwards searching the bodies. Pyotr Voykov (Pinhus Wainer) took part in the shooting and assisted in carrying out the coup by bayoneting their victims. Later, he was delegated to destroy the family’s remains by a combination of dismemberment and the use of sulphuric acid.

The scrawled writing was afterwards found on the walls of the room in which the Imperial family was slaughtered. These were translated and transcribed by German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). The lines appear on the wall which the Imperial family had their backs to whilst being gunned down. There was also writing discovered near the basement window of Ipatiev House.

Belsatzar ward in selbiger Nacht / Von seinen Knechten umgebracht or in English ‘Belsatzar was, on the same night, killed by his slaves.’

In the Old Testament story, the King of the Gentiles, Belshazzar, saw ‘the writing on the wall’ foretelling his destruction (Daniel 5) and he was killed as punishment for his offenses against Israel’s God.

In a clever play on the original Heine quotation the unknown writer, almost certainly one of the killers, substituted Belsatzar for Heine’s spelling Belsazar, in order to signal even more clearly his intended symbolism. The Heine inscription described the racial / ethnic nature of the murders: ‘A Gentile king had just been killed as an act of Jewish retribution.’

According to the guard’s recollection, the Empress and Grand Duchess Olga with others during the massacre made a vain attempt at crossing themselves. Yakov Yurovsky reportedly raised his gun at Nicholas’s torso and fired; the Tsar fell dead after which his killer shot the schoolboy son of the Tsar and Tsarina.

An assortment of killers then began shooting chaotically until all the intended victims had fallen. Several more shots were fired and the doors were then opened to disperse the smoke and fumes. A few of the martyrs survived the carnage. These unfortunates were stabbed to death with bayonets by Peter Ermakov.  It was necessary for him and others to use bayonets as with the doors now open there was a need to keep the noise of the carnage muted.

The last martyrs to die were Tatiana, Anastasia, and Maria. Between them, the sisters were carrying a little over 1.3 kilograms of diamonds sewn into their clothing. This had given them a degree of protection from the gunshots. These young women and girls were bayoneted to death.

Olga sustained a gunshot wound to the head. Maria and Anastasia were said to have crouched up against a wall covering their heads in terror until they were shot down. The Jewish revolutionary Yakov Yurovsky personally killed Tatiana and Alexei. Tatiana died from a single bullet through the back of her head. Alexei received two bullets to the head, one behind the ear after the executioners realised he had not been killed by the first shot.  Anna Demidova, Alexandra’s maid, survived the initial onslaught but was stabbed to death against the back wall while trying to defend herself with a small pillow that was filled with precious gems and jewels.

While the bodies were being placed on stretchers, one of the girls, possibly Anastasia, cried out and covered her face with her arm. Ermakov grabbed Alexander Strekotin’s rifle and bayoneted her in the chest. When it failed to penetrate the young woman’s torso he pulled out his revolver and shot her in the head.

Some of Pavel Medvedev’s stretcher bearers had by now begun to rifle through the victims’ clothes for valuables. On seeing such activity Yakov Yurovsky demanded that they surrender looted items or be shot.

In the hasty burial of the bodies, several jewels like these topazes were overlooked by Yurovsky’s murderers and eventually recovered by White Army investigator Nikolai Sokolov in 1919

The attempt to completely destroy the Imperial family’s remains began the following day. This operation was assisted by Yakov Yurovsky and carried out under the direction of Pyotr Voykov (Pinhus Wainer). The occasion was supervised also by Goloshchyokin and Beloborodov.

Pyotr Voykov recalled that dreadful scene with an involuntary shudder. He said that when this work was completed the dismembered cadavers were thrown down a forest mine. Upon this appalling scene of carnage was poured gasoline and sulphuric acid. In a vain attempt to destroy all evidence of the massacre the parts were afterwards allowed to burn for two days.

Pyotr Voykov afterwards recounted: “It was a terrible picture. We, the participants of the burning corpses were downright depressed about this nightmare. Even Yurovsky, in the end, could not resist and said that even those few days and he would have gone mad.” (Besedovsky G. Z. ‘On the Road to Thermidor’ M., 1997. S.111-116).

Soon after the massacre, Yekaterinburg was liberated by the White Armies. An aim of the liberating armies was to discover the mystery of the Imperial Russian family’s disappearance. To carry out his investigations the White Army’s delegated investigator, Nikolai Sokolov dressed as a peasant in order that he drew as little attention to himself as possible. It was at this point that the reward for the assassination of the Imperial family posted by Wall Street banker Jacob Schiff was settled. Jacob Schiff (1847~1920) is the Jewish-American banker whose financial clout funded the 1904 ~ 1905 Japanese in war against Tsarist Russia.  Schiff’s apologists and palace historians say the banker’s generosity was on account of the alleged anti-Semitism of Tsar Nicholas II.

On the basis of the material brought before it the White Army’s official investigator Nikolai Sokolov drew the following conclusions: ‘the corpses were brought to the mine under the cover of darkness in the early morning of July 17, 1918. Clothing was roughly cut (damage is found on buttons, hooks, and eyes). The corpses were then dismembered and completely destroyed by fire and sulphuric acid.

At the same time, the bodies of those executed were heated with fat added to by lead from bullets. To explain the later finding of jewels Nikolai Sokolov explained that according to the testimony of the witness Tyegleva the Grand Duchess secretly sewed jewelry in her clothing. The princesses had also secreted gems in their apparel, some of which went unnoticed during the disposal of the family’s remains.

When the mine shaft was later excavated there were discovered much jewelry. From the torn brassieres a rain of pearls and precious stones cascaded. Some jewelry, mostly earrings, and pendants lay unnoticed in the surrounding grass. Despite the discovery of the jewelry the executioners and body disposal team worked quickly to finish their work with their paying attention to individual items. Witnesses reported the movement of cars and trucks, carts and riders near Ganina Yama 15 km north of Yekaterinburg. This area during the period July 17 to 19, 1918 was cordoned off by Red Guards. Nikolai Sokolov writes that during these days were also heard grenade explosions.

Ganina Yama (Ganya’s Pit or Ganina hole). Investigator Nikolai Sokolov at the site of a bonfire. Nikolai Sokolov devoted his life to collecting documents and evidence relating to the murder of the Romanovs.

Nikolai Sokolov later managed to find two orders drawn up by Pyotr Voykov on July 17, 1918. These orders had been placed with a local drugstore named Russian Society. Each order bore the requirement to issue employee Commissariat Zimin with sulphuric acid. The first order was for 5lbs with 3lbs more placed in the second jar. In total, Zimin was issued 11lbs of sulphuric acid for which was paid 196 roubles and 50 kopecks. According to Nikolai Sokolov, the sulphuric acid was delivered to the mine on 17 and 18 July.

At the mine itself traces of two large fires were discovered. Here, dozens of objects have since been discovered that relate to the murdered Imperial family.  Many items were burned or otherwise destroyed. Nothing was spared of the Tsar’s family; even their pet dogs were slaughtered.

Nikolai Sokolov. To carry out his investigations the Nikolai Sokolov dressed in peasant in order that he draws as little attention to himself as possible.

Following the massacre of the Imperial family, the German-born Jacob Schiff celebrated the funding of the 1917 Bolshevik coup which had brought about regime change in Russia. Schiff had personally underwritten a substantial reward for the murder of the Russian royal family.

This Jewish banker’s investment funded a tyranny which, at the time of its collapse in 1990, is estimated to have directly or indirectly led to a loss of life estimated between 70 and 100 million mostly European Christians. Thus, Jacob Schiff appears to have achieved the dubious distinction of being the biggest killer in the history of humankind.

On the night of the New York celebrations a letter penned by the banker was read out to the ecstatic attendees.:  “Will you say for me to those present at tonight’s meeting how deeply I regret my inability to celebrate with the Friends of Russian Freedom the actual reward of what we hoped for and striven for these long years.” ~ Jacob Schiff, New York bankers, ‘Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Quote: New York Times, March 24. 1917.

From this point on the insurrection was to continue until 1922. Soon after the expulsion of the White Armies corporate America and Europe moved in to plunder the assets of the nation that was before the coup Imperial Russia.

Yekaterinburg bore the name of Sverdlovsk from 1924 to 1991. The street and Ipatiev House where the Imperial family was placed under house arrest before their slaughter was renamed Sverdlov Street. In this grim building, Imperial Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his family and members of his household staff, were massacred. In 1991 a decision was made that this city’s name be returned to its original name of Yekaterinburg.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin during his tenure has atoned for the crimes carried out by the Bolsheviks. Throughout the Russian Federation now appear monuments dedicated to the memory of the Gulag network of slave camps. Ipatiev House was razed to the ground during the Soviet period in 1977. Since, on the ruins of the demolished house, stands Yekaterinburg’s Church of the Blood Cathedral.

In addition to the cathedral the Church of St. Nicholas (the Tsar has since been canonised) has been built at the Romanov Monastery. This holy place of pilgrimage is situated close to where the Tsar and his family’s remains were discovered at Ganina Yama.

About Author:  Michael Walsh, an international journalist and broadcaster, was voted Writer of the Year by the Euro Weekly News Group of Newspapers. The author of 48 book titles, Walsh was the leader of the British Movement from 1968 to 1984. He now lives in Spain. Some of his books include Witness to History, Life in the Reich, Ransacking the Reich, The Red Brigands, Slaughter of a Dynasty, etc

• [1] Erich E. Haberer, Jews and Revolution in Nineteeth-Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 9.
• [2] Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 201-202.
• [3] Naomi Wiener Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1999), 38.
• [4] Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper Perennial, 1987), 459.
• [5] Ibid., 369.
• [6] Ibid., 424.
• [7] Ibid., 451-452, 452-53.
• [8] Ibid., 458.
• [9] Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 204), 105.
• [10] Johnson, A History of the Jews, 459.
• [11] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “The Relentless Cult of Novelty,” Catholic Education Resource Center.
• [12] Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 17.
• [13] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/forrel.asp.
• [14] See Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy (Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1976).
• [15] Cyrus Adler and Isidore Singer, ed., The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk-Wagnalls, 1901-1906), 583-585.

Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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