The life of Elizabeth Romanov and Barbara
After her husband was assassinated in 1905, she gave away her jewels and worldly possessions and founded the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary in Moscow, a community combining prayer with active care for the poor and sick, and gave herself entirely to that work through the years of war that followed.
After the Bolshevik revolution, the new government at first left the convent in peace, but on the day after Pascha in 1918 Elizabeth was ordered into exile and, with a young nun of her convent named Barbara who refused to leave her side, was sent east to join other members of the imperial family already under guard. In July of that year, together with several Romanov relatives, Elizabeth and Barbara were taken outside the town of Alapaevsk and thrown alive into a mineshaft, with grenades hurled in after them. Witnesses reported hearing hymns sung from the depths of the shaft for some time afterward. Their remains, found largely undisturbed by decay, were eventually carried through China to Jerusalem, where they rest today in the church of Saint Mary Magdalene that Elizabeth had helped to build.
