On November 2, 1997, I wrote the following e-mail to Mr. Bob Atchison of
Pallasart Web Design who maintains the website
"Alexander Palace Time Machine".
According to Mr. Atchison, he welcomes comments. The letter to him which follows
is self-explanatory:
I have read with interest your website
article, "My Name is Anastasia".
However, I would like to comment on some statements which are made on page three
regarding Anna Anderson. You write, "Some scientists were able to prove that she
wasn''t me...something I always knew." First of all, the DNA tests conducted by
Dr. Peter Gill did not prove that she was Franziska Schanzkowksa. Dr. Gill took
pains to call the tissue tested as the "putative Anna Anderson samples". Anna
Anderson appeared in Berlin in February 1920. Franziska disappeared in March of
1920. Franziska''s brother, Felix Schanzkowski met Anna Anderson on May 9, 1927,
and signed an affidavit stating categorically that she was not his
sister.
Your article states that she "couldn''t even speak Russian". Anna Anderson
explained her reluctance to speak Russian because it was the language of the
drunken, cursing, obscene guards who terrorized her family and who pronounced
the death sentence in the miserable cellar of "that house". Yet she spoke it in
her sleep and under anesthetics. I personally witnessed her listening to
conversations in Russian and offering her own pertinent comments in
English.
Your article states, "She didn''t look like me at all." Dr. Moritz
Furtmayr, one of Germany''s most respected forensic experts concluded that Anna
Anderson was Anastasia based on his P.I.K. method which is
accepted in German
courts as positive proof. In addition the comparison of Anna Anderson''s right
ear with photographs of the pre-1918 Anastasia were "identical in 17 anatomical
points and tissue formation, five more than the dozen points normally accepted
by West German courts to establish a person''s identity." (Associated Press
dispatch 2-25-77)