The insight of a historian

In 1947 the Austrian woman Charlotte, wife of attorney Nikolay Ganev from Gabarevo, settled in the village with her little son Zhoro. “She was a very kind, pleasant woman. We called her Lotte. We became friends. She was very close with the doctor’s wife madam Nora. She said they talked in German, which Nora commanded ‘as her mother tongue’ (remember this statement of Lotte!). Unfortunately, Charlotte and her husband divorced and she became a nun in a convent near Veliko Tarnovo. But she did not stay there long, she got a job in Kalofer and often came to Gabarevo. She renewed her friendship with us and Nora. She visited her often and sometimes would say to us: ’Nora is carrying a big secret!” This is what aunty Nedyalka, the 90-year-old widow of priest Nyagolov, told me. In Kalofer Charlotte came in contact with the curator of the Hristo Botev Museum, Vasilka Kerteva, a highly educated woman, who showed lively interest in Nora. Lotte introduced them and they met several times in Gabarevo. In 1949 or 1950 Kerteva went on a business trip to the Soviet Union to seek materials on Hristo Botev in the Russian museums. There she came upon one of the last pictures of the tsar’s family. The face of the girl on the right (Anastasia), elongated, with big intelligent eyes, the only one among the four daughters wearing a bang, seemed familiar, dÎjÈ vu. Finally she remembered, “Yes, in Gabarevo!” Upon her return to Kalofer, Kerteva suggested to Charlotte to visit Nora. They talked, Kerteva watched her carefully, and when the two left, she told Charlotte, “You know who madam Nora is? She is Anastasia, the daughter of Nikolay II!” These words and her positive affirmation that judging by pictures and dates of birth Anastasia and Alexey corresponded to Eleonora and Georges, Lotte shared as a secret with the priest’s family. These were things that it was dangerous to talk about in those times. So, the historian’s insight was kept secret for 4 decades.

The examining magistrate Blagoy Emanuilov, born in Gabarevo, set out to unravel the mystery with emotion and zeal. A team of research associates also took up the matter. The aim was to unbury the remanants of the supposed tsar’s children and run a DNA test. Unfortunately, since 1956 the old village cemetery was a park, which hindered the mission. In July 1995, anthropologist Prof. Yordan Yordanov from Sofia and Assoc. Prof. Maria Grozeva, forensic doctor in Stara Zagora, with permission from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the District Prosecutor’s Office, uncovered two graves but a suspicion was voiced that they were not the ones. Blagoy Emanuilov had greater success. On September 14, 1996, he came across skeletons, remnants of clothes and objects proving beyond doubt that they belonged to Nora and Georges. Emanuilov locked them away somewhere and hence started the absurd conflict who, where and how should send them for analysis. It is unexplainable why the Bulgarian and the Russian states did not intervene in this pursuit of monopolizing the revelation of the truth. But this is another story.

The impact

The version set forth was received differently – some received it with great curiosity, others found it absurd, even called it a “mare’s nest” (Duma, No 181, August 4, 1995), but most were the skeptics, and not without reason.

After the execution of the tsar’s family a rumour spread that some of the children had escaped. (Evidence of this is a secret telegram by Lenin, sent out on the next day to the soviets in Russia: “Trace down the missing Romanova!”) Since then more than 50 imposters have claimed at different times that they are heirs of Nikolay II. The most striking example is of Anna Anderson, who in March 1922 declared she was Anastasia. But after 64 years of delusion, when Anderson died, a DNA test showed she was a dummy and she was really the Polish woman Francisca Shankowska.

According to the historian Vladlen Sirotkin, the Georgian Natalia Balikadze is Anastasia. Even from a convent in Bulgaria came the rumour that allegedly a nun of Russian descent before her death confessed she was Princess Anastasia. There were false Alexeys, too. For example, a Heino Tamet from Vancouver. On the other hand, Prince Alexis d’Anjou de Bourbon-Conde Romanov-Dolgoruki, living in Spain, alleges he is grandson of the surviving Princess Maria (according to one version, the surviving princess was not Anastasia but Maria) from her daughter Olga-Beata. He died in Spain in 1995 at the age of 46 without seeing the DNA results from the laboratory of Dr. Peter Gill in Scotland Yard. All this gave grounds to the Bulgarian skeptics to say: “Well, why not fabricate a Bulgarian Anastasia?” Still, I will attempt a portrait of Nora, as I saw her in 1949.

The Gabarevo “Countess”

I was 11 years old when my family went to live in Gabarevo (1946). My father was assigned as head of the Bulgarian Agrarian and Cooperative Bank branch in the village, and my mother was appointed teacher. One of the first “secrets” I heard from my school mates was they took lessons in some subjects with the wife of the “Russian doctor”, Madam Nora, who was a “POLISH COUNTESS” (this was her legend when in 1922 she arrived in Gabarevo). The local teachers were jealous of these private lessons. Perhaps they thought their competence was questioned or they feared that Nora, who was said to live a weird way of life, may have an adverse influence on the children. Who knows? But it was a fact that every student “exposed” to be taking lessons with Nora immediately fell in the teachers’ disgrace. I admit that my imagination was fascinated by the strange sound of her name, by the children’s accounts filled with adoration, and especially by her noble descent. But when three years later my parents’ ambitions to give me a solid grounding for the city high school brought me in the circle of Madam Nora’s private students, I had to part with my romantic fantasies about her and gradually accept her more earthly, less perfect but much more dramatic character.

My first encounter with Nora was disappointing, even shocking. I was met by a tall, gaunt, skinny woman, looking too old for her age (she was 50 at the time). Her short light hair had a strange hair-style – fluffy above the ears as a wig, with a curled bang on the high forehead. Her face was bluish pale and puffed up. She was dressed with aristocratic carelessness – corduroy trousers and pullover with high collar, round which a silk scarf was wound up. A large pedigree dog ran past her barking at me, but she scolded it and it disappeared with its tail between the legs. I was stunned by her voice – nasal and snuffling as if it came from a horn.

I must have looked quite dumbfounded, because Nora smiled slightly, patted me encouragingly on the back and took me in. She had turned the doctor’s quarters above the ambulatory into a kind of college, afternoon shift of the village school. Here came desperately poor students as well as excellent students who wanted to learn more in their favourite subjects. She accepted all. Apart from French and Russian, she taught them mathematics, history, even Bulgarian grammar, and instructed the girls in good manners, machine embroidery, cooking. She did it free – she took money from no one.

Nora was an extraordinary, extremely educated woman for her time. She had encyclopedic knowledge, proficiency in several languages, she had studied painting, she played the piano. A refined aristocratism transpired in her manners. All this she could only get in a very rich noble family. She was also distinguished for a cultivated restraint, discreetness and dignity. Now I realize that in Gabarevo she hardly had a milieu for adequate intercourse. Perhaps that is why to the end of her life she remained lonely and unappreciated. In fact, some years ago her goddaughter Mariana from Kazanlak put it very precisely: “For the inhabitants of Gabarevo Nora was always something like an extraterrestrial!”

Read in the next issue: “The shy”