Evsey Yatsovskiy’s grandmother

This is my husband's grandmother. I don’t remember her name. Her last name was Friedman. This picture was taken in the late 19th century.

My husband Evsey was born in Kiev in 1918. He came from an intellectual Jewish family. Evsey's parents were from Kiev. Before the outbreak of the October Revolution they moved to Lithuania to escape pogroms and the communist regime. Evsey's father, Jacob Yatsovskiy, was a real merchant, businessman, who knew how to make money. He did really well. Jacob owned a movie house in Kaunas, as well as a video library, which he founded with a Lithuanian companion. Apart from the cinema business, Jacob Yatsovskiy also represented some world-known Swiss firm, which produced lacquer and paint. Jacob donated a lot of money to charity and helped the poor. His wife, Maria, found another way to spend her husband's money. There was a coup d'etat in Lithuania in 1926 and the nationalists came to power. Four communists were executed in the central town square. Touchy Maria was deeply impressed by that and she soon became a member of an underground communist organization. Maria easily talked her husband into contributing rather large amounts of money to the communist party. Maria and Jacob had two sons: Evsey, and his younger brother Alexander.