ON July 17th, 1918, Elizabeth’s younger sister, Alix, was murdered with her husband Tsar Nicholas II and their five children by the Cheka, Vladimir Lenin’s secret police.

A month earlier, on Lenin’s orders they had also arrested Elizabeth, together with other Russian nobility and the nun Barbara, who had once been her maid.

The Red Army took them to a school on the outskirts of Alapayevsk. On July 5th, the soldiers were dismissed, and the Cheka drove their prisoners in a cart to an abandoned iron mine.

There Elizabeth, Barbara and the others were beaten, and tossed down a 66-foot deep shaft to break their necks.

However, most survived the fall. Elizabeth tended their wounds, and soon the sound of hymns floated up the shaft. Lenin’s men dropped in grenades, but the singing continued, so after more grenades they threw down burning brushwood, and left any survivors to choke or starve.

Lenin announced that ‘an unidentified mob’ had been responsible.