How did Rasputin die?

A group of men led by Prince Felix Yusupov decide to murder Rasputin and invite him to the Yusupov palace in December, 1916. Felix feeds Rasputin cakes and wine laced with lethal amounts of cyanide, but is horrified when it seems to have no effect. Felix then shoots Rasputin, who still does not die. Rasputin stumbles through the courtyard to the palace gates before being shot four more times, finally collapsing and dying. His body is thrown from a bridge into the icy Malaya Nevka River.
Alexandra reads a note left behind by Rasputin, revealing his prior knowledge that he would be murdered, and that should the murderers be nobles, the Imperial Family would die within two years.

Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny

Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny is a 1996 biographical historical drama television film which chronicles the last four years (1912–16) of Grigori Rasputin's stint as a healer to Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia; the heir apparent to the Russian throne as well as the only son of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna; who suffered from hemophilia. The film is narrated in the first person by Alexei.

In 1991, the remains of Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family (except for Alexei and Maria) are discovered. The voice of Nicholas's young son, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, narrates the remainder of the story.

1883 Western Siberia, a young Grigori Rasputin is asked by his father and a group of men to perform magic. Rasputin has a vision and denounces one of the men as a horse thief. Rasputin watches as the man is chased outside and beaten.

Twenty years later, Rasputin sees a vision of the Virgin Mary, prompting him to become a priest. Rasputin quickly becomes famous, with people, even a bishop, begging for his blessing.

Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg, Alexei is confined to his bed suffering from severe bruising to his leg caused by Hemophilia B, a disease that prevents proper blood clotting. Nicholas has so far kept Alexei's illness a secret from the Russian people. Eugene Botkin, the family's court physician, has been unable to help the boy. Alexei's mother, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna asks to see a spiritual healer, and is recommended to call upon Rasputin.

Rasputin is summoned to the Tsar's palace and brought before Alexei. Rasputin startles Nicholas and Alexandra by asking Alexei about his leg, despite neither of them having told him of Alexei's affliction. Rasputin soothes Alexei with images of sailing whilst he places his hand on the boy's leg. Rasputin limps away, causing Alexandra to believe he has absorbed Alexei's pain into his own body. Nicholas asks Rasputin how he knew about Alexei's leg, and Rasputin responds that the Virgin Mary told him and sent him to heal Alexei; Nicholas remains skeptical.

The next morning, Alexei awakens in perfect health and proclaims that Rasputin has healed him with magic. Dr. Botkin insists that it was a treatment he started using on Alexei the week before. Alexandra visits Rasputin to thank him. Rasputin questions Alexandra's faith in God, placing the blame for Alexei's disease on her weak prayers. Alexandra asks that Rasputin move in with the family and gives him his own chamber in the palace.

Rasputin begins to become acquainted with Nicholas's daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia; worrying Nicholas after he hears rumors of Rasputin's womanizing and flings with prostitutes. Nicholas soon asks Rasputin to leave the palace.

Later, Alexei suffers a severe nosebleed and Alexandra begs for Rasputin to be brought back to heal her son again. Rasputin returns and heals Alexei, converting Nicholas in the process, although Dr. Botkin remains convinced that Rasputin is merely hypnotizing Alexei.

Dr. Botkin vents his suspicions to Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, who sends men to spy on Rasputin.
A woman named Princess Marisa visits Rasputin, asking to be blessed. Rasputin tells her that before one can ask for absolution one must sin, and convinces her to have sex with him. Stolypin's spies watch this happen.

Stolypin approaches Nicholas with his findings, and with news that rumors are circulating throughout Russia regarding Rasputin's stay at the palace and closeness to the Imperial Family, particularly Alexandra. That night, a drunken Rasputin makes some obscene comments about the Imperial Family and is brought before the Tsar. Nicholas banishes Rasputin from St. Petersburg, and Rasputin prophesies a terrible future for Russia and Stolypin's own assassination. A month later Nicholas is informed of the onset of World War I, and Stolypin is shot and killed.

Alexei suffers another severe bleeding, prompting Alexandra and Nicholas to call Rasputin. Rasputin heals Alexei over the phone, re-confirming Nicholas's faith in the healer. Rasputin is forgiven and returns to the palace.

As millions of Russians soldiers die in World War I, citizens place the blame on Alexandra and Rasputin. Rasputin stops seeing the Virgin Mary, causing Alexandra and his fellow monks to desert him.

In 1917, with Russia on the verge of collapse due to the war, Nicholas is forced to abdicate as Tsar and is sent into exile with his family. The Imperial Family is executed in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918.

Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin is shown to have been killed in 1913, on the occasion of the Romanov dynasty's Tercentenary celebration, and just prior to the outbreak of World War I, while he was actually killed in 1911.

The Russian Orthodox Choir which sings the litany at the Tercentenary liturgy also seems to be a choir of the 1990s, since the Patriarch Alexei is mentioned by name. The Patriarchate in fact did not exist under the later Romanovs, having been abolished by Peter the Great."Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny" won a Golden Globe for Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture made for TV. Alan Rickman, starring as Rasputin, won an Emmy (along with Greta Scacchi playing Tsarina Alexandra) and a Golden Globe for his work in this movie. Ian McKellen, playing Tsar Nicholas II, won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, and was nominated an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor.

After being poisoned, shot, stabbed, clubbed, castrated, and hurled into the icy waters of the Neva, Rasputin was contacted by the Ogdru Jahad. They sent him visions explaining their nature and what they wanted from him, namely, to release them from their prison, help bring about the end of the world, and make way for a new world. Uncertain of how to proceed, Rasputin waited to be contacted again.

Ogdru Jahad

The Ogdru Jahad are fictional characters in Mike Mignola's "Hellboy" comic series. They are the Dragon of Revelation, and are destined to bring about the end of the world. Though the Ogdru Jahad are the central antagonists of the franchise, they are not themselves active, their release from imprisonment instead being the object of many other villains' plans. They were imprisoned in their Golden Cocoons by the Right Hand of Doom shortly after the creation of Earth, but not before they spawned 369 children, known as the Ogdru Hem.

Mostly inspired by the Great Old Ones of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos (with some ancient Egyptian and Babylonian influences as well) the Ogdru Jahad are serpentine/crustacean entities which once resided on, and presided over, Earth. They are pitiless, chaotic, bent on destruction and subjugation and often so horrific in appearance that the mere sight of one of them sometimes induced madness.
They are listed as follows:In the beginning of time, God created an order of spirits. Of these, many of the greater spirits were sent to newborn Earth to oversee it as Watchers. After a time, one Watcher named Anum "...dared to take fire from the air, and with it, fashioned out of mud the dragon (...)". The Ogdru Jahad is thus made up of the four classical elements. The other Watchers set their seals on the Ogdru Jahad and yet the entities did not come to life until nightfall. By then, the awakened Ogdru Jahad are instilled with purpose and function as they instantly give birth to the Ogdru Hem who become Earth's first lifeforms.

The Watchers, upon seeing the creation of these abominations, went to war with them. The Ogdru Hem were eventually all disposed of, with many of them barely clinging to existence in some fashion, with the Ogdru Jahad sealed by their creator in a prison of crystal and placed in the heart of the abyss. The other Watchers, however, turn on Anum and destroyed him. After that, God looked down in fury on what had happened, and exacted his retribution on the Watchers for botching their task: some were cast down into the pit, while others were stranded on Earth to breed monsters. Eventually, lesser spirits were given form by God and took up residence on Earth as the first men, the Golden People of Hyperboria.

As it turned out, Anum's right hand survived and was found by the Hyperboreans as it became a holy relic and was attached to a great statue at the behest of their king Thoth. Holding three Watchers captive in a secret garden, Thoth learned the inner workings of the universe and only shared a small fraction of his knowledge to the people. 10,000 years later, Hyperboria's downfall began when Hecate used Thoth to find the Watchers, drain them of their blood, and reveal all their secrets to the people. Though Thoth cursed Hecate in her serpentine form, her actions led to Hyperboria's corruption as they begin to worship the Black Goddess, one of many epithets that Hecate came to be called, and commit atrocities in her name. These actions led to the statue coming to life and slaughtering the many Hyperboreans before finally hurling itself over a cliff. The Ice Age then enables the raise of humanity, the second race, while the Hyperboreans were divided into two groups. While one branch who gave their successors knowledge before departing, those among the Hyperboreans who continue to worship Hecate took refuge underground and became extinct at the hands of their corrupted slaves in their attempt to reclaim their former glory. Anum's hand eventually was recovered and ended up in Hell. As the hand is the key to freeing the Ogdru Jahad from their prison, which would usher in a new and final race of men, it came to be known as ""the Right Hand of Doom"".

When Hellboy was born, the Right Hand of Doom was grafted onto the newborn's arm by Azzael before being sent away from Hell and summoned to Earth years later by Rasputin. Hellboy is aware that he must keep the hand, as it would be more dangerous to try to rid himself of it. Attempts have already been made to separate Hellboy from his arm, both to protect the world and to hasten its destruction. Hellboy believes he is the best protection the arm can have.

While certain events have made it clear that the Right Hand of Doom is the Key to releasing the Ogdru Jahad, the actions of Herman von Klempt and the frog monsters suggest that there are other conditions that need to be met. The summonings of the Conqueror Worm and Katha-Hem were meant to lead to the Ogdru Jahad's freedom, yet Hellboy's right hand had no role in these schemes and were thus considered doomed to failure. Even Nimue being possessed by the Ogdru Jahad to serve as their vessel and conduit to prematurely enter the world also ended in failure yet began the series of events that would conclude with the end of humanity.

By the end of B.P.R.D, Hell on Earth, the Ogdru Jahad are on the verge of victory, with one of them landing on Earth.

From the varied attempts of the comic's villains to free the Ogdru Jahad, it is readily apparent that the release of the Ogdru Jahad is closely tied to the fall of mankind. Whether the fall of man causes the release or quickly follows it is not known with any certainty. All the characters attempting to liberate it agree that the Ogdru Jahad will do something akin to "burning the earth to a cinder" so it is possible they are all referring to some common vision of the dragon's release but are guessing at how the prophecy is fulfilled.

Immortal and vastly powerful beyond description, sometimes referred to as a single entity, the Ogdru Jahad's motivations may be impossible to represent in human terms. As such, the human and quasi-human inhabitants of the Hellboy universe have expressed a variety of opinions on what the Ogdru Jahad desire beyond freedom, which it desires above all other things.

Beyond the basic premise of seeking freedom and then burning the earth, there is much dissent as to precisely what the Ogdru Jahad desire. The aliens that watch the cosmic prison of the Ogdru Jahad apparently perceive Earth as a focal point necessary to maintaining the prison. If the Ogdru Jahad are released, they will destroy Earth and then the entire Universe. Herman von Klempt believes that once man has been destroyed, the three hundred and sixty-nine Ogdru Hem will rise up from their prisons, free the Ogdru Jahad and burn the Earth to ashes. Similarly, the Bog Roosh was plagued with dreams in which Hellboy's hand is taken and used to free the Ogdru Jahad, who then burn the earth to cinders. Rasputin, on the other hand, seems convinced that the desire of the Ogdru Jahad is to create a new, perfect world out of the ashes of the old one, where the final race of man will live. He tells Inger von Klempt that her grandfather was unable to see beyond the destruction of the human race, and that a new Eden does indeed await the final race of man. Hecate also strongly implies that there will be a ""new world to come"" during a conversation with Rasputin in the Conqueror Worm epilogue, but mentions that she cannot see that far ahead, and that death could await them just as easily. In "The Third Wish", the Daoine Sidhe explicitly state that it is prophesied that a new world shall rise from the old due to the Right Hand of Doom.

After being imprisoned in the void, the Ogdru Jahad turned their considerable forces toward finding a way to escape their confinement and exact their revenge on the world. Since they are trapped in deep space, their contact with humanity is sparse at best. However, since the Ogdru Jahad are supremely powerful psychic entities, they have been able to establish contact with mortals on Earth in order to coerce them into doing their bidding.

In Austria in 1939, the Nazis attempted to open relations with space-borne monsters by sending them the corpse of one of their greatest scientists, Dr. Ernst Oeming, in the hopes that the creatures would use it as a vessel and return to Earth. On March 20, 1939, even though the mission, which took place at Hunte Castle, was interrupted by the arrival of Lobster Johnson and a detachment of American soldiers, the launch went ahead as planned. The castle, however, was left in ruins, and all parties were killed except for Herman von Klempt. The creatures received the spacecraft, and responded by placing one of their own inside Oeming's lifeless body.

After the events of "Wake the Devil," Herman von Klempt is provided with the truth about the Oeming mission and the details of the return of the capsule. The invisible space monsters showed von Klempt the destruction that would result from releasing the worm they had planted within Oeming's body. Once the world had been overtaken by the worm, the Ogdru Hem would be released from their prisons, and they would, in turn, release the Ogdru Jahad, who will reduce the world to ashes. Despairing over the failures of his best laid plans, and inspired by Rasputin posing as the angel of death, von Klempt returned to Hunte Castle and set to work.

Von Klempt succeeded in bringing Oeming's capsule back to Earth, and from it rose a massive juggernaut known as the Conqueror Worm. Spewing forth a noxious gas, the worm turned von Klempt's human agents into frog monsters, then devoured them immediately to feed its insatiable hunger. Only quick intervention by Hellboy and Roger the Homunculus, aided by the ghost of Lobster Johnson and a mysterious alien, managed to halt the worm's feasting march. Herman von Klempt watched in dismay as his plans were foiled, only to be grabbed by Roger and heaved off a cliff to his final death.

Eventually, after years of silence and waiting, Rasputin was approached by Heinrich Himmler, head of Hitler's SS. Recognizing this as an opportunity to acquire the resources needed to establish a stronger connection to the Ogdru Jahad, Rasputin joined forces with the Nazis and soon assembled a team of Nazi occultists, consisting primarily of Ilsa Haupstein, Leopold Kurtz, and Prof. Doktor Karl Ruprecht Kroenen. This team was known as Project Ragna Rok. On December 23, 1944, Rasputin and his colleagues opened a doorway into the void, and Hellboy was brought forth, albeit unbeknownst to the Nazis (but not to Rasputin). After this apparent failure, the Allies won World War II and Rasputin and his allies scattered. Rasputin himself traveled to a hidden temple in the distant Arctic dedicated to the Ogdru Jahad. Inside, he sat at the foot of a statue of Sadu Hem for almost fifty years until he was disturbed by Professor Bruttenholm, providing a catalyst for his, and Sadu Hem's, sudden re-awakenings. Ilsa, Kroenen and Kurtz relocated to the frigid north of Norway and cryogenically froze themselves until Rasputin's return, though they did not revive themselves until after Rasputin's failure at Cavendish Hall.
In the film, Rasputin was sucked into the portal and was seemingly destroyed, not to be seen again for 60 years. Only 2 members of the Nazis occultist team, Ilsa Haupstein and Kroenen survived.

In "Wake the Devil," while trying to strike back at Hellboy by using Ilsa's connection to a Romanian vampire, Rasputin brings Hellboy into the clutches of the Hecate. Hecate threatens Hellboy with his destiny, and in the end Hellboy prevails. Retreating to the abode of his grandmother, Baba Yaga, Rasputin tries to come to terms with the fact that the Ogdru Jahad manipulated him. He realizes that the Ogdru Jahad were behind his latest venture, though he alone is responsible for the failure. He also must deal with the fact that rather than saving Ilsa, he instead sacrificed her to Hecate, who would use Ilsa's corpse (and the Iron Maiden which contained it) as her new body.

Moreover, Hecate tells Rasputin that he had no hope in trying to awake the Dragon in the events of "Seed of Destruction" - the only power that can free the Ogdru Jahad is Hellboy's right hand, and Rasputin is nothing more than a tool with which to manipulate and maneuver Hellboy. Upon hearing this, Rasputin loses control and attacks Hecate, who virtually destroys him, leaving nothing more than a tiny shard of his soul for the Baba Yaga to preserve in an acorn shell.

A former love of Merlin before she used his knowledge to imprison him in his grave, Nimue lost her mind and became a devout worshipper of the Ogdru Jahad before the other witches killed her and eventually placed her severed body parts in a box that is buried within the earth. However, during the power vacuum caused by Hecate being removed from power, Gruagach had the witches allow him to revive Nimue to be their new leader. But Nimue exacts her revenge on the witches who imprisoned her and abandoned Grugach as she prepares to wage war on the world. However, Nimue would later learn that she became a vessel for the Ogdru Jahad in their attempt to prematurely enter the world through her. Hellboy manages to kill Nimue to thwart the Orgdu Jahad, only to be killed by the witch as she is being dragged into Hell.

As the Ogdru Jahad advance their plans on Earth, it becomes evident that they intend to transform humanity into a new "final" race of man. The attempts are seen in the frog monsters that were first seen in "Seed of Destruction" and then again in "Conqueror Worm" and "," creatures strong enough to overpower Hellboy and can assume human form. Moreover, the frogmen can exert a degree of telepathic influence over their victims, confusing them with illusions and mind-tricks. These creatures also possess souls, that create a corrupting influence on living beings. If they pass on, a creature seems to devour their ectasic spirits. Whether this being is the Ogdru Jahad or something else entirely is uncertain.

The frogmen are linked to the Ogdru Jahad, and are being employed to free the Ogdru Hem who were imprisoned by the Watchers at the beginning of time. Once the Ogdru Hem are free, the Ogdru Jahad will follow. Currently, due to the events in "A Plague of Frogs," numerous frogmen have escaped the clutches of the B.P.R.D. and are moving across the North American countryside. These nests seem constructed around the purpose of praying to the Ogdru Hem and, in certain locations, obtain relics and items which spawn vicious and lethal Ogdru-Hem-like creatures. Moreover, the frogs have transcended their human limitations and have developed the ability to convert their bodies to biological factories, producing thousands of tadpoles which become frog monsters.

After the events of "", it appeared that the frog monsters have been dealt a major setback but, as seen in "B.P.R.D.: The Warning" and "B.P.R.D.: The Black Goddess", the creatures regrouped and allied themselves with the subterraineans from "". In "", it is revealed that the frog monsters were flawed attempts to create the next race of men with Abe Sapien also learning that he is actually a perfected version of the creatures.

In the 2004 film "Hellboy", the Ogdru Jahad were mentioned by name only twice by Rasputin. They were portrayed as indistinct, octopus-like creatures encased in crystal shells. They are referred to by him as the seven gods of chaos who will destroy the world and from its ashes "a new Eden will arise". At the conclusion of the film, their prisons were shattered and the Ogdru Jahad began their assault on Earth. Before the final lock could be released by Hellboy, he regained his senses and the Ogdru Jahad disappeared.

Sammael, a demon in the film, was referred to as the "son of Nergal"; hinting the monster to be one of the Ogdru Hem through Nergal-Jahad. The giant Behemoth, the "god" Rasputin answers to and appears at the end of the film resembles the Ogdru Hem known as Sadu-Hem.

In "", the Ogdru Jahad (or possibly Ogdru Hem) made a cameo as the brothers of Thunder and Lightning. Though not mentioned by name, they were referred to as the "Dragons".

Some writers – including Oleg Shishkin, Andrew Cook, Richard Cullen, and Michael Smith – have suggested that agents of the British Secret Intelligence Service (BSIS) were involved in Rasputin's assassination. According to this theory, British agents were concerned that Rasputin was urging the tsar to make a separate peace with Germany and withdraw from the war, and that this would allow Germany to transfer a large number of troops to the Western Front. The theory suggests, in other words, that British agents played an active role in Rasputin's assassination in order to keep Russia in the war and force Germany to keep defending the Eastern Front. While there are several variants of this theory, in general they suggest that British intelligence agents under the command of Samuel Hoare, and in particular Oswald Rayner – who had attended Oxford University with Yusopov – were directly involved in planning and carrying out the assassination, or that Rayner had personally shot Rasputin. However, historians do not seriously consider this theory. According to historian Douglas Smith, "there is no convincing evidence that places any British agents at the murder scene." Historian Keith Jeffrey has stated that if British Intelligence agents had been involved in the assassination of Rasputin, "I would have expected to find some trace of that" in the MI6 archives, but that no such evidence exists.

Grigori Rasputin

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (; ;  – ) was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and gained considerable influence in late imperial Russia.

Born to a peasant family in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye, Tyumen Oblast, Rasputin had a religious conversion experience after taking a pilgrimage to a monastery in 1897. He has been described as a monk or as a "strannik" (wanderer, or pilgrim), though he held no official position in the Russian Orthodox Church. After traveling to St. Petersburg, either in 1903 or the winter of 1904–5, Rasputin captivated some church and social leaders. He became a society figure, and met the Tsar in November 1905.

In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a healer for the Tsar and his wife Alexandra's only son Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia. At court, he was a divisive figure, seen by some Russians as a mystic, visionary, and prophet, and by others as a religious charlatan. The high point of Rasputin's power was in 1915, when Nicholas II left St Petersburg to oversee Russian armies fighting World War I, increasing both Alexandra and Rasputin's influence. As Russian defeats in the war mounted, however, both Rasputin and Alexandra became increasingly unpopular. In the early morning of, Rasputin was assassinated by a group of conservative noblemen who opposed his influence over Alexandra and the Tsar.

Historians often suggest that Rasputin's terrible reputation helped discredit the tsarist government, and thus helped precipitate the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty, which happened a few weeks after he was assassinated. Very little about Rasputin's life and influence is certain, however, as accounts have often been based on hearsay, rumor, and legend.

Rasputin was born a peasant in the small village of Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River in the Tobolsk Governorate (now Tyumen Oblast) in Siberia. According to official records, he was born on and christened the following day. He was named for St. Gregory of Nyssa, whose feast was celebrated on January 10.

There are few records of Rasputin's parents. His father, Efim (sometimes spelled Yefim), was a peasant farmer and church elder who had been born in Pokrovskoye in 1842, and married Rasputin's mother, Anna Parshukova, in 1863. Efim also worked as a government courier, ferrying people and goods between Tobolsk and Tyumen The couple had seven other children, all of whom died in infancy and early childhood; there may have been a ninth child, Feodosiya. According to historian Joseph T. Fuhrmann, Rasputin was certainly close to Feodosiya and was godfather to her children, but "the records that have survived do not permit us to say more than that."

According to historian Douglas Smith, Rasputin's youth and early adulthood are "a black hole about which we know almost nothing", though the lack of reliable sources and information did not stop others from fabricating stories about his parents and his youth after Rasputin's rise to fame. Historians agree, however, that like most Siberian peasants, including his mother and father, Rasputin was never formally educated, and he remained illiterate well into his early adulthood. Local archival records suggest that he had a somewhat unruly youth – possibly involving drinking, small thefts, and disrespect for local authorities – but contain no evidence of his being charged with stealing horses, blasphemy, or bearing false witness, all major crimes that he was later rumored to have committed as a young man.

In 1886, Rasputin travelled to Abalak, where he met a peasant girl named Praskovya Dubrovina. After a courtship of several months, they married in February 1887. Praskovya remained in Pokrovskoye throughout Rasputin's later travels and rise to prominence, and remained devoted to him until his death. The couple had seven children, though only three survived to adulthood: Dmitry (b. 1895), Maria (b. 1898) and Varvara (b. 1900).

In 1897, Rasputin developed a renewed interest in religion and left Pokrovskoye to go on a pilgrimage. His reasons for doing so are unclear: according to some sources, Rasputin left the village to escape punishment for his role in a horse theft. Other sources suggest that he had a vision – either of the Virgin Mary, or of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye – while still others suggest that Rasputin's pilgrimage was inspired by his interactions with a young theological student, Melity Zaborovsky. Whatever his reasons, Rasputin's departure was a radical life change: he was twenty-eight, had been married ten years, and had an infant son with another child on the way. According to Douglas Smith, his decision "could only have been occasioned by some sort of emotional or spiritual crisis."

Rasputin had undertaken earlier, shorter pilgrimages to the Holy Znamensky Monastery at Abalak and to Tobolsk's cathedral, but his visit to the St. Nicholas Monastery at Verkhoturye in 1897 was transformative. There, he met and was "profoundly humbled" by a "starets" (elder) known as Makary. Rasputin may have spent several months at Verkhoturye, and it was perhaps here that he learned to read and write, but he later complained about the monastery itself, claiming that some of the monks engaged in homosexuality and criticizing monastic life as too coercive. He returned to Pokrovskoye a changed man, looking disheveled and behaving differently than he had before. He became a vegetarian, swore off alcohol, and prayed and sang much more fervently than he had in the past.

Rasputin would spend the years that followed living as a "Strannik" (a holy wanderer, or pilgrim), leaving Pokrovskoye for months or even years at a time to wander the country and visit a variety of holy sites. It is possible that Rasputin wandered as far as Athos, Greece – the center of Orthodox monastic life – in 1900.

By the early 1900s, Rasputin had developed a small circle of acolytes, primarily family members and other local peasants, who prayed with him on Sundays and other holy days when he was in Pokrovskoye. Building a makeshift chapel in Efim's root cellar – Rasputin was still living within his father's household at the time – the group held secret prayer meetings there. These meetings were the subject of some suspicion and hostility from the village priest and other villagers. It was rumored that female followers were ceremonially washing him before each meeting, that the group sang strange songs that the villagers had not heard before, and even that Rasputin had joined the Khlysty, a religious sect whose ecstatic rituals were rumored to include self-flagellation and sexual orgies. According to historian Joseph Fuhrmann, however, "repeated investigations failed to establish that Rasputin was ever a member of the sect," and rumors that he was a Khlyst appear to have been unfounded.

Word of Rasputin's activity and charisma began to spread in Siberia during the early 1900s. Sometime between 1902 and 1904, he travelled to the city of Kazan on the Volga river, where he acquired a reputation as a wise and perceptive "starets," or holy man, who could help people resolve their spiritual crises and anxieties. Despite rumors that Rasputin was having sex with some of his female followers, he won over the father superior of the Seven Lakes Monastery outside Kazan, as well as a local church officials Archimandrite Andrei and Bishop Chrysthanos, who gave him a letter of recommendation to Bishop Sergei, the rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, and arranged for him to travel to St. Petersburg, either in 1903 or in the winter of 1904–1905.

Upon meeting Sergei at the Nevsky Monastery, Rasputin was introduced to a number of different church leaders, including Archimandrite Feofan, who was the inspector of the theological seminary, was well-connected in St. Petersburg society, and later served as confessor to the Tsar and his wife. Feofan was so impressed with Rasputin that he invited him to stay in his home, and became one of Rasputin's most important and influential friends in St. Petersburg.

According to Joseph T. Fuhrmann, Rasputin stayed in St. Petersburg for only a few months on his first visit and returned to Prokovskoye in the fall of 1903. Historian Douglas Smith, however, argues that it is impossible to know whether Rasputin stayed in St. Petersburg or returned to Prokovskoye at some point between his first arrival there and 1905. Regardless, by 1905 Rasputin had formed friendships with several members of the aristocracy, including the "Black Princesses," Militsa and Anatasia of Montenegro, who had married the Tsar's cousins (Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich and Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich), and were instrumental in introducing Rasputin to the Tsar and his family.

Rasputin first met the Tsar on November 1, 1905, at the Peterhof Palace. The tsar recorded the event in his diary, writing that he and Alexandra had "made the acquaintance of a man of God – Grigory, from Tobolsk province." Rasputin would not meet the Tsar and his wife again for some months: he returned to Prokovskoye shortly after their first meeting and did not return to St. Petersburg until July 1906. On his return, Rasputin sent Nicholas a telegram asking to present the tsar with an icon of Simeon of Verkhoturye. He met with Nicholas and Alexandra on July 18 and again in October, when he first met their children. At some point, the royal family became convinced that Rasputin possessed the power to heal Alexei, but historians disagree over when: according to Orlando Figes, Rasputin was first introduced to the Tsar and Tsarina as a healer who could help their son in November 1905, while Joseph Fuhrmann has speculated that it was in October 1906 that Rasputin was first asked to pray for the health of Alexei.

Much of Rasputin's influence with the royal family stemmed from the belief by Alexandra and others that he had eased the pain and stopped the bleeding of the Tsarevich – who suffered from hemophilia – on several occasions. According to historian Marc Ferro, the Tsarina had a "passionate attachment" to Rasputin as a result of her belief that he could heal her son's affliction. Harold Shukman wrote that Rasputin became "an indispensable member of the royal entourage" as a result.

Rasputin had been rumored to be capable of faith-healing since his arrival in St. Petersburg, and the Tsarina's friend Anna Vyrubova became convinced that Rasputin had miraculous powers shortly thereafter. Vyrubova would become one of Rasputin's most influential advocates.

It is unclear when Rasputin first learned of Alexei's hemophilia, or when he first acted as a healer for Alexei. He may have been aware of Alexei's condition as early as October 1906, and was summoned by Alexandra to pray for Alexei when he had an internal hemorrhage in the spring of 1907. Alexei recovered the next morning.

During the summer of 1912, Alexei developed a hemorrhage in his thigh and groin after a jolting carriage ride near the royal hunting grounds at Spala, which caused a large hematoma. In severe pain and delirious with fever, the Tsarevich appeared to be close to death. In desperation, the Tsarina asked Vyrubova to send Rasputin (who was in Siberia) a telegram, asking him to pray for Alexei. Rasputin wrote back quickly, telling the Tsarina that "God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much." The next morning, Alexei's condition was unchanged, but Alexandra was encouraged by the message and regained some hope that Alexei would survive. Alexei's bleeding stopped the following day.

Historian Robert K. Massie has called Alexei's recovery "one of the most mysterious episodes of the whole Rasputin legend." The cause of his recovery is unclear: Massie speculated that Rasputin's suggestion not to let doctors disturb Alexei had aided his recovery by allowing him to rest and heal, or that his message may have aided Alexei's recovery by calming Alexandra and reducing the emotional stress on Alexei. Alexandra, however, believed that Rasputin had performed a miracle, and concluded that he was essential to Alexei's survival.

Some writers and historians, such as Ferro, have claimed that Rasputin stopped Alexei's bleeding on other occasions through hypnosis.

The royal family'sand especially Alexandra'sbelief that Rasputin possessed the power to heal Alexei brought him considerable status and power at court. The Tsar appointed Rasputin his "lampadnik," or lamplighter, who was charged with keeping the lamps that burned in front of religious icons in the palace lit and thus had regular access to the palace and royal family. By December 1906, Rasputin had become close enough to the royal family to ask a special favor of the Tsar – that he be permitted to change his surname to Rasputin-Novyi (Rasputin-New). Nicholas granted the request and the name change was speedily processed, suggesting that the Tsar viewed – and treated – Rasputin favorably at that time. Rasputin used his status and power to full effect, accepting bribes and sexual favors from admirers and working diligently to expand his influence. He soon became a controversial figure; he was accused by his enemies of religious heresy and rape, was suspected of exerting undue political influence over the tsar, and was even rumored to be having an affair with the Tsarina.

Even before Rasputin's arrival in St. Petersburg in 1903, alternative religious movements such as spiritualism and theosophy had become increasingly popular among the city's aristocracy, and many of them were intensely curious about the occult and the supernatural more generally. While fascinated by him, the Saint Petersburg elite did not widely accept Rasputin. He did not fit in with the royal family, and he and the Russian Orthodox Church had a very strained relationship. The Holy Synod frequently attacked Rasputin, accusing him of a variety of immoral or evil practices. Because Rasputin was a court official, though, he and his apartment were under 24-hour surveillance, and, accordingly, there exists some credible evidence about his lifestyle in the form of the famous "staircase notes" – reports from police spies, which were not given only to the Tsar but also published in newspapers.

According to Rasputin's daughter, Maria, Rasputin did "look into" the Khlysty sect, but rejected it. One Khlyst practice was known as "rejoicing" (радение), a ritual which sought to overcome human sexual urges by engaging in group sexual activities so that, in consciously sinning together, the sin's power over the human was nullified. Rasputin is said to have been particularly appalled by the belief that grace is found through self-flagellation.

Like many spiritually minded Russians, Rasputin spoke of salvation as depending less on the clergy and the church than on seeking the spirit of God within. He also maintained that sin and repentance were interdependent and necessary to salvation. Thus, he claimed that yielding to temptation (and, for him personally, this meant sex and alcohol), even for the purposes of humiliation (so as to dispel the sin of vanity), was needed to proceed to repentance and salvation. Rasputin was deeply opposed to war, both from a moral point of view and as something which was likely to lead to political catastrophe. During the years of World War I, Rasputin's increasing drunkenness, sexual promiscuity and willingness to accept bribes (in return for helping petitioners who flocked to his apartment), as well as his efforts to have his critics dismissed from their posts, made him appear increasingly cynical. Attaining divine grace through sin seems to have been one of the central secret doctrines which Rasputin preached to (and practiced with) his inner circle of society ladies.

During World War I, Rasputin became the focus of accusations of unpatriotic influence at court. The unpopular Tsarina, meanwhile, who was of Anglo-German descent, was accused of acting as a spy in German employ. When Rasputin expressed an interest in going to the front to bless the troops early in the war, the Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, promised to hang him if he dared to show up there. Rasputin then claimed that he had a revelation that the Russian armies would not be successful until the Tsar personally took command. With this, the ill-prepared Tsar Nicholas proceeded to take personal command of the Russian army, with dire consequences for himself as well as for Russia. While Tsar Nicholas II was away at war, Rasputin's influence over Tsarina Alexandra increased. He soon became her confidant and personal adviser, and he convinced her to fill some governmental offices with his own handpicked candidates. To advance his power further in the highest circles of Russian society, Rasputin cohabited with upper-class women in exchange for granting political favors.

World War I, the ossifying effects of feudalism, and a meddling government bureaucracy all contributed to Russia's declining economy at a very rapid rate. Many at the time laid the blame with Alexandra and with Rasputin, because of his influence over her. Here is an example:
Vladimir Purishkevich was an outspoken member of the Duma. On November 19, 1916, Purishkevich made a rousing speech in the Duma, in which he stated, "The tsar's ministers who have been turned into marionettes, marionettes whose threads have been taken firmly in hand by Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna — the evil genius of Russia and the Tsarina... who has remained a German on the Russian throne and alien to the country and its people." Felix Yusupov attended the speech and afterwards contacted Purishkevich, who quickly agreed to participate in the murder of Rasputin.
Rasputin's influence over the royal family was used against him and the Romanovs by politicians and journalists who wanted to weaken the integrity of the dynasty, force the Tsar to give up his absolute political power and separate the Russian Orthodox Church from the state. Rasputin unintentionally contributed to their propaganda by having public disputes with clergy members, bragging about his ability to influence both the Tsar and Tsarina, and also by his dissolute and very public lifestyle. Nobles in influential positions around the Tsar, as well as some parties of the Duma, clamored for Rasputin's removal from the court. Perhaps inadvertently, Rasputin had contributed to the diminishing respect the Tsar's subjects had for him.

On a 33-year-old peasant woman named Chionya Guseva attempted to assassinate Rasputin by stabbing him in the stomach outside his home in Pokrovskoye. Rasputin was seriously wounded, and for a time it was not clear that he would survive. After surgery and some time in a hospital in Tyumen, however, he did recover.

Guseva was a follower of Iliodor, a former priest who had supported Rasputin before denouncing his sexual escapades and self-aggrandizement in December 1911. A radical conservative and anti-semite, Iliodor had been part of a group of establishment figures who had attempted to drive a wedge between the royal family and Rasputin in 1911. When this effort failed, Iliodor had been banished from St. Petersburg and was ultimately defrocked. Guseva claimed to have acted alone, having read about Rasputin in the newspapers and believing him to be a "false prophet and even an Antichrist." Both the police and Rasputin, however, believed that Iliodor had played some role in the attempt on Rasputin's life. Iliodor fled the country before he could be questioned about the assassination attempt, and Guseva was found to be not responsible for her actions due to insanity.

According to his daughter Maria, Rasputin was very much changed by the experience and began to drink alcohol.

Having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsarina had made him a threat to the empire, a group of nobles led by Prince Felix Yusupov, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and the right-wing politician Vladimir Purishkevich concocted a plan to kill Rasputin in December 1916, apparently by luring Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace.

Rasputin was murdered during the early morning on, at the home of Felix Yusupov. He died of three gunshot wounds, one of which was a close-range shot to his forehead. Beyond this, little is certain about his death, and the circumstances of his death have been the subject of considerable speculation. According to historian Douglas Smith, "what really happened at the Yusupov home on 17 December will never be known." The story of Rasputin's death that Yusupov recounted in his memoirs, however, has become the most frequently told version of events.

According to Yusupov, he invited Rasputin to his home shortly after midnight and ushered him into the basement. Yusupov offered Rasputin tea and cakes which had been laced with cyanide. At first, Rasputin refused the cakes, but then began to eat them. To Yusupov's surprise, Rasputin did not appear to be affected by the poison. Rasputin then asked for some Madeira wine (which had also been poisoned) and drank three glasses, but still showed no sign of distress. At around 2:30 am, Yusupov excused himself to go upstairs, where his fellow conspirators were waiting. Taking a revolver from Dmitry Pavlovich, Yusupov returned to the basement and, referring to a crucifix that was in the room, told Rasputin that he'd "better look at the crucifix and say a prayer," then shot him once in the chest. Believing him to be dead, they then drove to Rasputin's apartment, with Sukhotin wearing Rasputin's coat and hat, in an attempt to make it look as though Rasputin had returned home that night. Upon returning to the Moika Palace, Yusupov went back to the basement to ensure that Rasputin was dead. Suddenly, Rasputin leapt up and attacked Yusupov, who – with some effort – freed himself and fled upstairs. Rasputin followed and made it into the palace's courtyard before being shot by Purishkevich and collapsing into a snowbank. The conspirators then wrapped Rasputin's body in cloth, drove it to the Petrovsky Bridge and dropped it into the Malaya Nevka River.

News of Rasputin's murder spread quickly, even before his body was found. According to Douglas Smith, Purishkevich spoke openly about Rasputin's murder to two soldiers, and to a policeman who was investigating reports of shots shortly after the event, but urged them not to tell anyone else. An investigation was launched the next morning, as rumors that Rasputin had been killed were already circulating. One newspaper, the "Stock Exchange Gazette," even ran a report of Rasputin's death "after a party in one of the most aristocratic homes in the center of the city" on the afternoon of.

When two workmen noticed blood on the railing of the Petrovsky Bridge and a boot was found on the ice below, river police began searching the area for Rasputin's body. His body was found under the river ice on January 1 [O.S. 19 December], approximately 200 meters downstream from the bridge. An autopsy was conducted by Dr. Dmitry Kosorotov, the city's senior autopsy surgeon. The report that Kosorotov wrote was later lost, but he later stated that Rasputin's body had shown signs of severe trauma, including three gunshot wounds - one of which had been sustained at close range, and to the forehead - a slice wound to his left side, and many other injuries, many of which Kosorotov felt had been sustained post-mortem. Kosorotov found a single bullet in Rasputin's body, but stated that it was too badly deformed and of a type too widely used to trace. He found no evidence that Rasputin had been poisoned. According to both Douglas Smith and Joseph Fuhrmann, Kosorotov found no water in Rasputin's lungs, and reports that Rasputin had been thrown into the water alive were incorrect. Contrary to some later accounts that claimed that Rasputin's penis had been severed, Kosorotov found his genitals intact.

Rasputin was buried on January 2 [O.S. December 21] at a small church that Anna Vyrubova had been building at Tsarskoye Selo. The funeral was attended only by the royal family and a few of their intimates. Rasputin's wife, mistress, and children were not invited, although his daughters met with the Royal family at Vyrubova's home later that day. His body was exhumed and burned by an attachment of soldiers shortly after the Tsar abdicated the throne in March 1917, in order to prevent his burial site from becoming a shrine or a rallying point for supporters of the old regime.

Rasputin's daughter, Maria Rasputin (Matryona Rasputina) (1898–1977), emigrated to France after the October Revolution, and then to the United States. There, she worked as a dancer, and then a lion tamer in a circus.

Numerous film and stage productions have been based on the life of Rasputin.


When was Menachem Z. Rosensaft born?

Menachem Z. Rosensaft (born 1948 in Bergen-Belsen, Germany) an attorney in New York and the Founding Chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Survivors, is a leader of the Second Generation movement of children of survivors, and has been described on the front page of the "New York Times" as one of the most prominent of the survivors' sons and daughters. He also served as National President of the Labor Zionist Alliance, and was active in the early stages of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. As psychologist Eva Fogelman has written: "Menachem Rosensaft's moral voice has gone beyond the responsibility he felt as a child of survivors to remember and educate. He felt the need to promote peace and a tolerant State of Israel as well. He wanted to bring to justice Nazi war criminals, to fight racism and bigotry, and to work toward the continuity of the Jewish people".

Menachem Z. Rosensaft

In March 2009, Menachem Rosensaft was appointed as general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, the umbrella organization of Jewish communities around the world based in New York. Since 2008, Menachem Rosensaft has been Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, and he was also Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Syracuse University College of Law. In 2011 he was appointed lecturer in law at Columbia University Law School where he teaches a course in the law of genocide. He is the editor of "God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors", published by Jewish Lights Publishing.

The son of two survivors of the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, he was born on May 1, 1948 in the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany. From 1945 until 1950, his father, the late Josef Rosensaft, was chairman of the Jewish Committee of the Bergen-Belsen DP camp and of the Central Jewish Committee in the British Zone of Germany. His mother, the late Dr. Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft, was a member of President Carter's Commission on the Holocaust, and a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Menachem Rosensaft received his B.A. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1971, together with an M.A. degree in creative writing from the university's Writing Seminars. From 1972 until 1975, he was an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Jewish Studies at the City College of the City University of New York and assisted Professor Elie Wiesel in his courses on Holocaust literature and Hasidism. He received a second M.A. degree in modern European history from Columbia University in 1975, and in 1979, he received his J.D. degree from the Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Book Review Editor of the "Columbia Journal of Transnational Law".

After clerking for two years for Whitman Knapp, United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York, he spent fourteen years as an international and securities litigator at several major New York law firms and at an international bank. He is multilingual, has broad experience in European, Middle Eastern, and South American legal, commercial, and political issues, and has conducted sensitive negotiations with senior government officials at both national and municipal levels.

In 1995, he became Senior International Counsel for The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, and from 1996 to 2000 was Executive Vice President of the Jewish Renaissance Foundation, Inc. As a foundation executive, he was responsible for the development, coordination and funding of educational and cultural projects in Eastern and Central Europe, including the acquisition and restoration of landmark buildings for use as a Jewish cultural center in Warsaw, Poland, and developing innovative educational programs for Russian-Jewish immigrants to Germany. In 1999, he was honored by the Mayor of Warsaw for "inspiring work in city planning and preservation of historical monuments".
From September 2000 until December 2003 Rosensaft was a partner in the New York office of a national law firm, representing, among other clients, the Audit Committee and independent Directors of a New York Stock Exchange listed company in connection with an internal investigation of accounting irregularities, a related proceeding brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and class action litigation. In January 2004 he joined a financial services firm in New York City as Special Counsel, becoming its General Counsel in May 2005. He played a key role in guiding the firm through a period of intense regulatory and governmental scrutiny and implementing good governance practices.

He was appointed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council by President Bill Clinton in 1994, and reappointed to a second five-year term in 1999, chairing its Content Committee from 1994 to 2000, its Collections and Acquisitions Committee from 1996 to 2000, and its Committee on Governance from 2000 to 2002. He was a member of the Council's Executive Committee from 1996 until 2003. He is the editor of Life Reborn, Jewish Displaced Persons 1945-1951, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2001. In September 2010, President Obama appointed Rosensaft to a third term on the US Holocaust Memorial Council.

He has been a Trustee of the Park Avenue Synagogue since 1994, and he was elected President of the Synagogue in 2003. He is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Holocaust Survivors' Memoirs Project, a joint publishing endeavor with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Israel, Vice President of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Moment Magazine. He is also a former Chairman of the Executive Committee of the American Section of the World Jewish Congress. He was one of 45 prominent American Jews who discussed the significance of fatherhood within the context of their Jewish identity in the 2004 book, Jewish Fathers: A Legacy of Love. He received the 2003 Elie Wiesel Holocaust Remembrance Award of Israel Bonds, and was awarded the 2006 Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Feature Writing of the American Jewish Press Association for his Foreword to "Great Love Stories of the Holocaust," published in the June 2005 issue of Moment. In November 2011, he received the Distinguished Humanitarian Award from the Jewish Faculty & Staff Association of New York City College of Technology. He has published articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, Moment, The New York Law Journal, the National Law Journal, the New York Jewish Week, the Forward, the Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz, the JTA News Bulletin, and other newspapers and professional journals. He is married to Jean Bloch Rosensaft, also the daughter of Holocaust survivors, who is Senior National Director for Public Affairs and Institutional Planning at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and director of its New York museum. He is the co-author, with their daughter, Joana D. Rosensaft, of "The Early History of German-Jewish Reparations," published in the Fordham International Law Journal.

In September 1981, he was one of the founders of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and was elected the organization's first Chairman. Since June 1984, he has had the title of Founding Chairman. Under his leadership, the International Network organized major conferences of children of survivors in New York in 1984 and Los Angeles in 1987, and in 1982, it held the first citywide rally in New York City on behalf of Ethiopian Jewry. Rosensaft also participated in the planning of and programming for the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Jerusalem in June 1981, and the mass gatherings of thousands of Holocaust survivors in Washington, D.C. (1983), Philadelphia (1985), and New York (1986).

Rosensaft's philosophy of Holocaust remembrance is greatly influenced by what he has described as Elie Wiesel's "commitment to human rights, his readiness to apply the lessons of the Holocaust to contemporary issues while at all times emphasizing its Jewish particularity." Thus, his focus has consistently been on social and political action rather than psychological introspection. In his opening address at the first international conference of children of Holocaust survivors in New York in May 1984, he noted that human rights abuses alongside the persistence of anti-Semitism "serve to remind us that Jews are never the only victims of the world's evil and venality." Pointing out that "we are even confronted by the terrifying phenomenon of Jewish would-be terrorists on the West Bank who strive to implement the racist philosophy expounded by fanatics such as Meir Kahane," the American-born member of the Israeli parliament who promoted a virulently anti-Arab policies, he concluded that "it is not enough for us only to commemorate the past. Rather we must be sensitive to all forms of human suffering, and we must take our place at the forefront of the struggle against racial hatred and oppression of any kind."

Twenty-one years later, on April 17, 2005, he reiterated these views in a speech at Bergen-Belsen on the 60th anniversary of its liberation. The children and grandchildren of the survivors, he declared:

Rosensaft has also struggled with the theological implications of the Holocaust. "Where was God when the fires of Auschwitz failed to ignite the universe," he asked at a 1995 commemoration at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. As reported in the New York Times, he "posed the question of how God could be praised if he did not stop the killing. Then he suggested an answer: 'What if God was not with the killers, with the forces that inflicted Auschwitz on humanity?'" He explained that, "To me, the incredible element of the Holocaust is not the behavior of the murderers, because that is pure evil. It is the behavior of the victims and how they remained human and in many ways behaved in a superhuman manner.... So the God I choose to pray to was at Auschwitz, but it was not in the manner of the victims' deaths, it was in the way in which they lived." Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York City, Rosensaft elaborated on his belief that evil is perpetrated by human beings, not by God:

Rosensaft elaborated on this theme in a guest sermon at Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City on September 7, 2013, the Saturday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in which he concluded that as he remembered his parents on the anniversary of their death, "perhaps God did not hide His face from them after all during the years of the Shoah. Perhaps it was a divine spirit within them that enabled them to survive with their humanity intact. And perhaps it is to that God that we should be addressing our prayers during these Days of Awe and throughout the year."

In response to this sermon, Pope France wrote to Rosensaft in a personal email message that:

In the spring of 1985, Rosensaft was an outspoken critic of President Ronald Reagan's decision to pay homage to fallen German World War II soldiers, including members of Hitler's Waffen SS, at the military cemetery at Bitburg during a state visit to Germany. Addressing some 5,000 Holocaust survivors and their families in Philadelphia on April 21, 1985, Rosensaft said, "For heaven's sake, let him find another cemetery. There must be at least one in all of Germany that does not contain SS men." On May 5, 1985, Rosensaft organized and led a demonstration of survivors and children of survivors at Bergen-Belsen in protest against the visits that day by President Reagan and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to the mass-graves of Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel wrote in his memoirs that Rosensaft was "one of the very few to strongly oppose President Reagan in the Bitburg affair."

In April 1987, Rosensaft played a key role in convincing the government of Panama not to give sanctuary to Nazi war criminal Karl Linnas, and in ensuring Linnas' deportation from the United States to the Soviet Union. He also "publicly criticized the German government for failing to provide Holocaust survivors with adequate medical coverage while paying generous pensions to veterans of the Waffen SS," and he has challenged the multimillion-dollar fee application submitted by the court-appointed lead settlement counsel in a Holocaust-based class action brought against Swiss banks in the name of survivors.

In the winter of 2002, Rosensaft sharply attacked the Jewish Museum in New York for trivializing the Holocaust in its exhibition, "Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art," by including a display of six lifelike busts of the notorious Auschwitz SS doctor Josef Mengele and such works as "Prada Deathcamp" and the "Giftgas Giftset" of poison gas canisters packaged with Chanel, Hermes and Tiffany& Co. logos. "For a Holocaust survivor to hear that a bust of Mengele is on display at the Jewish Museum will at the least cause nightmares," Rosensaft told Alan Cooperman of the Washington Post. "It's the functional equivalent of painting pornography on Torah scrolls and exhibiting it as art. It may well be art. But it is also offensive to many, many people.... The intellectual reasons of displaying deliberately provocative art have to give way to the far more real pain that this is going to cause for thousands of Holocaust survivors who are still alive."

In 2009, he called on Pope Benedict XVI to publicly condemn controversial bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the Society of Saint Pius X and a noted Holocaust denier. He has also written that Mitt Romney's faith should not be an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign.

In March 2010, Rosensaft sparked a formal investigation by the Maryland authorities into the activities of Menachem Youlus, a rabbi and scribe based in a Washington, DC, suburb who had falsely claimed to have "rescued" Torah scrolls that had survived the Holocaust, which he sold to synagogues and Jewish centers through his "Save a Torah" charitable organization. "Any exploitation of the Holocaust for crass commercial purposes is appalling," Rosensaft wrote in the New York Post on March 7, 2010. "Creating false Holocaust histories for Torah schools is despicable."

"In late March," reported James Barron of The New York Times on July 26, 2010, Rosensaft wrote to the Maryland attorney general, Douglas F. Gansler, alleging "possible fraud and/or misrepresentation" by Save a Torah. He asked for an investigation into whether Save a Torah had been'soliciting funds under false pretenses.' Mr. Rosensaft, who is also an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School and teaches a course on World War II war crimes trials, took issue with Rabbi Youlus's description of [a Torah scroll that had allegedly been saved by a priest at Auschwitz who in turn supposedly had given it to Youlus]. 'There is no record of anyone even remotely fitting the description of the priest' Rabbi Youlus said had saved it, Mr. Rosensaft said in the letter. He also took issue with a Torah that Rabbi Youlus said had been at Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where Anne Frank died in 1945. Mr. Rosensaft's parents met at Bergen-Belsen. Mr. Rosensaft said that Rabbi Youlus's description of finding a Torah beneath a wooden floor in a barracks was not possible. The original buildings at Bergen-Belsen, he said, were burned to stop a typhus epidemic and the survivors were moved to a former German military installation nearby in May 1945. Mr. Rosensaft said that he was born in that installation in 1948 and returned many times to visit.

In July 2010, Save a Torah entered into an agreement with the Maryland authorities under which it would cease to provide Holocaust provenances for Torah scrolls unless "there is documentation or an independent verifiable witness to such history." The following year, Youlus was arrested in Manhattan and charged with fraud by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Five months later, when Youlus pleaded guilty to mail fraud and wire fraud in a US federal court, Rosensaft told The New York Times that, "I am gratified that this charlatan will now be fully exposed, as a matter of law, as a petty crook."

In December 2012, after Youlus had been sentenced to 51 months in jail, Rosensaft wrote told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) that, "This is extremely important because it sends a message that Holocaust deniers and Holocaust memory exploiters are not part of accepted society. There is very little if any difference between a Holocaust denier and someone like Youlus who exploits Holocaust memories in order to enrich himself." Rosensaft then wrote in the New York Jewish Week that,

In 2012, he denounced immigration restrictionists Peter Brimelow and Pat Buchanan as racists who should be shunned from mainstream political debate.

In a June 4, 2012, Huffington Post article in which he defended President Obama's reference to "a Polish death camp" at a Presidential Medal of Freedom presentation as "an innocent phraseological error," Rosensaft, citing a publication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote that "thousands of Polish political, religious and intellectual leaders were also killed by the Germans during World War II" alongside millions of Jews, and that "Between 70,000 and 75,000 non-Jewish Poles are estimated to have perished at Auschwitz alone." In the same Huffington Post article, Rosensaft pointed out that Polish government officials "have a valid historiographical point" in insisting that German annihilation and concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka not be referred to as "Polish death camps," and he noted that in 2006, he had "publicly supported the Polish Government's request that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization formally change the name of the site of the most notorious of the World War II camps on UNESCO's World Heritage List from 'Auschwitz Death Camp' to 'former Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp.'"

Rosensaft, who was known to be a supporter of the Israeli peace movement, was elected National President of the Labor Zionist Alliance in early 1988. Shortly thereafter, he confronted Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. Shamir had called on the American Jewish leadership to support his government's hard-line policies and criticized those who publicly espoused more dovish positions. Rosensaft responded by noting that since Israelis themselves were divided, "Why should we be accused of disloyalty?" "We support Israel fully and identify with her totally," he explained, referring to the more liberal Jewish groups that belonged to the Presidents Conference. "But that does not mean we have to agree with every single decision or policy set by the government or a particular minister. Voicing our concerns does not indicate disloyalty."

In December 1988, he was one of five American Jews who met in Stockholm, Sweden, with Yasir Arafat and other senior leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, resulting in the PLO's first public recognition of Israel. Writing in Newsweek, he explained that despite an initial reluctance to participate in such a meeting, he concluded that since he had urged others to negotiate with the PLO, "I really had no choice. Since I wanted others to talk to the enemy, I had to be willing to do so as well – not going would be a betrayal of my principles both as a Jew and as a Zionist." For Rosensaft, the very beginning of dialogue was a major accomplishment. "There are miles to go," he said. "But for God's sake, let's start talking. When you talk, you de-demonize the enemy."

A year later, in an open letter to Arafat also published in Newsweek, he voiced his dismay at the fact that the Palestinian leader had done nothing to move the peace process forward since the Stockholm meeting. "I knew, of course," he wrote, "that you had not overnight turned into Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer. Still, you have regrettably failed to take any substantive steps to persuade the Israeli public that their destruction has ceased to be the PLO's ultimate objective.... If you truly want peace, and I hope you do, you and your colleagues must do far more than you have done to date to demonstrate the sincerity of your intentions. You must renounce terrorism in fact, not merely in rhetoric."

In October 2000, Rosensaft expressed his utter disillusionment with Arafat. "We believed him," Rosensaft wrote in the Washington Post, "when he said that he and the PLO were committed to a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We believed him when he proclaimed an end to terrorism. We were wrong.... Of course the Palestinians were entitled to self-determination – even independence—but only on terms of mutual respect. The Palestinians' claims of nationhood could not stand separate and apart from their acknowledgment that Israelis are entitled to precisely the same rights. Arafat and his colleagues gave lip service to these lofty sentiments. We believed them. We were wrong.... Perhaps, in time, the Palestinians will realize that a different leader will better serve them and their cause. Perhaps they will realize that stabbing and stomping Israeli soldiers to death and then parading their mutilated bodies in an obscene triumph is not acceptable behavior in the 21st century. Perhaps. But then, we also believe in the eventual arrival of the Messiah. In the meantime, those of us who wanted so desperately to see Arafat as a positive, constructive presence of any kind must reiterate over and over again: We were wrong."

Rosensaft publicly confronted the Simon Wiesenthal Center's chief Nazi-hunter and Director for Eastern European Affairs Israeli Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff for denying Srebrenica genocide arguing that: