Tag #119016 - Interview #100488 (Leya Yatsovskaya )

His name was Evsey Yatsovskiy. He was born in Kiev [today Ukraine] in 1918. He came from an intellectual Jewish family. Evsey’s parents were from Kiev. Before the outbreak of the October Revolution [see Russian Revolution of 1917] [9] they moved to Lithuania to escape pogroms [in Ukraine] [10] 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 [11] 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.