Eugene Botkin

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Dr. Eugene Botkin
Dr. Eugene Botkin
Born(1865-03-27)27 March 1865
Russia
Died17 July 1918(1918-07-17) (aged 53)
OccupationPhysician
SpouseOlga Botkina (divorced 1910)
Parent(s)Dr. Sergei Botkin, father

Dr. Yevgeny Sergeivich Botkin (27 March 1865 – 17 July 1918), also known as Dr. Eugene Botkin, was the court physician for Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. While he was in exile with the family, he often helped treat Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia.

Botkin went into exile with the Romanovs after the Russian Revolution of 1917. He was murdered with the family at Ekaterinburg on 17 July 1918. Like them, he was canonized as a martyr by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981. His wife Olga and he divorced after she had an affair with the children's German teacher.[1]

Shortly before he died, he wrote a letter in which he said that he "unhesitatingly orphaned my own children in order to carry out my physician's duty to the end, as Abraham did not hesitate at God's demand to sacrifice his only son."[2]

References[change | change source]

  1. King, Greg, and Wilson, Penny, The Fate of the Romanovs, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., p. 61
  2. Christopher, Peter, Kurth, Peter, and Radzinsky, Edvard, Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra, 1995, ISBN 0316507873, p. 194