Daily News from New York, New York • 420

SUNDAY NEWS, NOVEMBER 12, 1961 144 i HieWomaillo 'Refuses to 'lie' J. i Recluse renews claim to recognition as the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia Justice Story The young Grand Duchess Anastasia (right) poses with parents, brother and sisters. By RUTH REYNOLDS found a few traces of the dead Romanovs in a mass of char in a pit. On the night of Feb. 17, 1920, a girl leaped into the Landwehr Canal in a dreary section of Berlin.

A night watchman saw her and, in the nick of time, hauled her out. Police took her to the Dalldorf Asylum for the Insane. Dazed and despondent, she refused to talk, even to give her name or the reason for her attempted suicide. Another patient, Klara Maria Peut-hert, a dressmaker who once lived near the Czar's palace, thought she recognized the Grand Duchess Tatiana in this human wreck. Peuthert went to Baron Arthur von Kleist, a German who had many friends among the Russian emigres.

He hurried to Dalldorf with a Russian baroness. This onetime lady of the Russian court shuddered as she gazed on the convalescent's twisted face; on the broken jaw which had not properly mended; on long-healed but still ugly souvenirs of beating, stabbing and burns, and on a slightly deformed foot. "It is not Tatiana," said the baroness. "Then it is Anastasia." retorted Peuthert and the exciting report of the grand duchess' survival spread over Europe and on to the United States. Eventually, the convalescent confided to her nurse, Sister Thea Malinovski, that she was, indeed, Anastasia.

and the account she gave of her wanderings was worthy of a dramatist. Cheats Funeral Pyre She said that when she recovered consciousness after the mass shooting, she found herself jouncing along in a cart in the company of t.vi men and three women. One of the men, Stanis-law Mishkevitch. told her that he was one of the execution squad, but loyal to the Czar. So when he found her alive he covered her with a blanket.

Then, on pretext of taking her to the funeral pyre, he carried her to the cart in which his family his mother, sister, brother Sergei, and Sergei's wife intended to flee Russia. As the cart rattled through Romania, the family used the surname Tschai-kowsky and they called their royal passenger Anna Romansky. By the time they reached Bucharest, Anna was in love with Stanislaw, or Alexander, as he was calling himself. She was also pregnant. So they were married.

A baby, Alexei, was born. Then Stanislaw, or Alexander, was killed in a street fight. Distraught, Anna put her son in an orphanage and followed her peasant in-laws through Europe. In Berlin, they vanished. Left alone, she tried to end her life.

From that day to this, Anna has never changed that story yet no trace of this particular Russian family named Mishkevitch or Tschaikowsky has ever been found. Investigators were unable to unearth a record of a marriage between Alexander Tschaikowsky and Anna Romansky in Bucharest or to. turn THIS generation's most mysterious woman, ill and ajring Anna Anderson, who insists she is Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, is appealing" last spring's verdict of a German civil court in Hamburg. "This time we will win," says Dr. Kurt Vermehren.

attorney for the 60-year-old woman who says she is a daughter of Czar Nicholas II, assassinated 43 years ago with six or five members of his imperial family. Ir. Vermehren has hanilled Anna Anderson's affairs without charge for two decades now, either because he is dedicated to her cause or because he credits the rumor that banks in the United States, England and elsewhere have millions of dollars awaiting any acknowledged heir of the Czar. 'Ve will win again." is the confident prediction of Baron Guenther von Beren-berg Gossler, attorney for Barbara, Duchess of If ecklenburg. whose family has been suing for years to get the small German estate left by her.

uncle-in-law, Czar Nicholas. Berenberg Gossler knrtws that in order to succeed this time Vermehren must do the impossible that is, persuade his client to leave her Black Forest retreat and appear in a courtroom. Last spring's verdict against Anna Anderson was partly based, according to the court, on her "failure to cooperate in providing Satisfactory proof." Anna feels that in the last 40 years she has submitted to more inspection than any one human should bear. Also, she says, the conclusions and opinions of all her examiners weie available to the German judges who spent three years reading history, examining- records, taking testimony of graphologists, dentists and anthropologists, and listening to the evidence of third persons quoting people long since dead. Because the story of Anastasia has intrigued the world for more than four decades, this is a resume of what the judges heard and of what higher judges will hear if the German State Supreme Court calls for a new trial on Anna Anderson's appeal.

AT the start of the Russian revolution. everybody loyal to the monarchy nought to flee his native land. This included the Czar, his wife, his only son and heir, and his four daughters the Duchesses O'ga, 22; Tatiana, 20; Maria. 18. and Anastasia.

17. But enemies caught up with the Royal Family and they were shot, along with a physician and a woman servant, in a clammy cellar in Ekaterinburg in July, 1913. One frrand duchess, who showed signs of life, was also bayoneted and bludgeoned with gun butt. Three days later, when loyal White Russian forces moved into this mining town in the foothills of the Urals, they up an orphanage record for a baby named Alexei Tschaikowsky. (He would now be 42 years old.) One of the first to discredit Anita publicly iras Aaron Simanovitch, court jeireler to the Czar.

After he talked with the girl at Dalldorf. he said (1) she did tint luok like the grand duchess he sair fr years before, (2) she neither understood nor read Russian, (3) she looked at a picture of Rasputin, the Czarina's close friend, and thought he was a rabbi, (4) she looked at a picture of the Czar and thought he vas "a military officer" and (5) she knew no intimate details of the royal family. Others contradicted Simanovitch. The argument raged. Hadn't the Czar's former valet identified her as Anastasia? Then why did he refuse to sign an affidavit tthat effect? Hadn't Baron von Pleskau, a Russian refugee, won her release from Dalldorf and taken her into his home for a while? Then why did she leave to go to the home of Baron and Gerda von Kleist 4 Rumors were rife concerning what went on in the von Kleist house.

Some said the girl spoke no Russian, although she understood the drift of it when she heard it spoken. On the other hand, there were reports that she spoke excellent English, as Anastasia assuredly did. Others said she spoke none. Some said she spoke German with a Slavic accent. Von Kleist's daughter said she muttered Polish in her sleep.

Gerda von Kleist neither liked nor believed in her house guest. ''She kisses my hand like a servant girl and crawls under the table to blow her nose," scolded the baroness. "No real aristocrat would behave that way." On a day in July, Anna slipped cut of the von Kleist house a move which was to haunt her the rest of her life. When she left she was wearing a camel's hair coat, a lilac dress and a green hat. Three days later she begged shelter from Klara Peuthert, saying she was afraid of the von Kleists.

She was now coatjess and wearing a dark blue dress and a light blue hat. ABOUT this time Kriminal Komissar Albert Gruenberg of the Berlin Police Department took her into his home. He did what should have been done before he invited Anastasia's blood relatives to see his guest. First, there was the Crown Princess Cecelia of Prussia, who had known Anastasia as a plump, merry and lazy child of 11. She could not absolutely identify this woman of a wasted figure and a distorted mouth that could speak only in painful whispers.

"But she is an impostor," the Crown Princess wrote Princess Irene of Hesse, who was Anastasia's maternal aunt. When Aunt Irene arrived incognito at the Gruenberg home to see for herself, the young woman was ill and she covered her face with the bedclothes and muttered in German. "No, she is not my niece," announced the princess, unaccustomed to such oe-havior by anyone. Then came Grand Duchess Olga, a paternal aunt to Anastasia. "My head says no, and my heart says yes," said Olga.

"And my religion tells me to follow my heart." For Olga was impressed by the meeting between the girl and Sascha, a nurse who had cared for Anastasia from infancy, until her exile. "ZurhaJ Znrha!" murmured the girl who now called herself Anna Tschaikowsky. It was Anastasia's pet name for the nurse. Thereafter she spoke of many intimate things which only Sascha knew. The nurse was convinced.

has the body of A'nastasia," said -Sascha, and the flat feet. And a protruding bone on the left foot. And the mark of a mole on the back of her neck. She has ears the same size and shape as Anastasia's, and her middle finger is crushed like Anastasia's was in the carriage." Grandmother Unconvinced So Grand Duchess Olga hurried to Copenhagen to tell the Dowager Duchess Maria Feodorovna that her granddaughter had been found. But, instead of opening her arms, the Czar's mother, a cautious soul, instigated an investigation.

Detectives talked with soldiers who saw the pit-crematory in Ekaterinburg. Several witnesses said they found the metal parts of six corsets, worn by the Czarina, her four daughters and her maid and that was proof enough to them thatAnastasia was dead. Others said they found four medallions of Rasputin, which the Czarina had the court jeweler make for each daughter. Simanovitch identified one of these as Anastasia's. Anastasia's tutor, Pierre Gilliard, interviewed the Berlin woman and said she was not Anastasia.

His wife agreed with him. Still, she bore Anastasia's physical markings the mole, the crushed finger, etc. and there were several doctors to say that her scars could have been -caused by bayonets, and that her spotty memory and inability to speak Russian or English might' have resulted from the bludgeoning. But other doctors said the scars on Anna's body came from alnlominal surgery, not bayonets, and dentists said her teeth had been extracted, not knocked out. And after the imperial family's dental surgeon examined plaster casts of the Eerlin woman's jaws he said there was no similarity to Anastasia's.

"She is not Anastasia," reported the chief investigator, K. E. Snvitch, to his royal employer. And thereafter, all of the Czar's immediate family, even Grand Duchess who had a head, heart and religion, called her "an imposter." Well, if she wasn't Anastasia. who was she? Anastasia's maternal uncle.

Grand Duke Ernest Ludwig von Hesse-Darmstadf, suggested that a newspaper, Nacht Ausgabe, find, the answer. (The.