People reported that trains and houses were being searched for 'Anastasia Romanov' by soldiers and secret police. When she was put in prison for a short time at Perm in 1918, Princess Helena Petrovna, the wife of Anastasia's distant cousin, Prince Ioann Konstantinovich of Russia, said that a guard took a girl who called herself Anastasia Romanova to her cell and asked her if the girl was the Tsar's daughter. When she did not recognize the girl, the guard took her away. Others in Perm later said that they saw Anastasia, her mother and sisters in Perm after they were killed, but this was only a rumor. Surprisingly, the rumors that had started to hide the fact that the family was dead helped the rumors that they were alive. A few days after they had been killed, the German government sent telegrams to Russia asking for "the safety of the princesses of German blood". Russia had signed a peace treaty with the Germans and did not want to tell them that the women were dead. Instead, they told them they had been moved to a safer place. This could have been why the 'Perm stories' began.