Did Anastasia Romanov Survive? The Woman Who Swore She Was Her

In 1918, the Romanov family was killed in a basement in Yekaterinburg, and no one found the bodies. Two years later, a woman pulled from a canal in Berlin claimed to be Anastasia, the Tsar's youngest daughter. Was she telling the truth? Berlin, February 17, 1920. A policeman pulls a young woman with no papers out of the freezing water, and she refuses to give her name. Two years later, in an asylum, she reveals who she is: Anastasia Romanov, survivor of the night the last Tsar, his wife, and their five children were shot. No one can prove otherwise, because not a single body from the family has been found. For more than sixty years, the woman the world came to know as Anna Anderson won some people over and was rejected by others: Anastasia's aunt visited her in a hospital, a detective gave her another name, and twelve Romanovs declared her an impostor while the German courts went more than thirty years without reaching a decision. In this documentary, we reconstruct Anastasia's childhood in the palace, the abdication of Nicholas II, the asylum England withdrew, the last night in the Ipatiev House, and the search for the bodies in the forest outside Yekaterinburg. And we follow Anna Anderson from Berlin to Virginia, until science had the final word. The question is twofold: who was she? And did anyone make it out of that basement alive? Chapters 00:00 Berlin, February 17, 1920 01:53 The Girl in the Mirror 04:08 The Cousin Who Closed the Door 06:33 The House of Special Purpose 09:05 The Basement 11:50 Three Days in the Forest 14:46 Miss Unknown 17:34 The Aunt 20:45 Forty Years in Court 24:07 The Grave Under the Railroad Ties 26:56 A Piece of Intestine 29:41 The Bonfire 32:16 Epilogue If you're fascinated by the stories of the world's most powerful families, subscribe to Power Bloodlines.