Roman Abramovich

Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich was born on 24 October 1966 in Saratov, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (present-day Saratov, Russia). His family was of Jewish descent and died when he was young. His mother, Irina (1939−1967), was a music teacher who died when Abramovich was one years old. His father, Aaron Abramovich Leibovich (1937−1969), worked in the economic council of the Komi ASSR, and passed away when Roman was three. Roman's maternal grandparents were Vasily Mikhailenko and Faina Borisovna Grutman, both born in Ukraine. It was to Saratov in the early days of World War II that Roman's maternal grandmother fled from Ukraine. Irina was then three years old. Roman's paternal grandparents, Nachman Leibovich and Toybe (Tatyana) Stepanovna Abramovich, were Belarusian Jews. They lived in Belarus and, after the revolution, moved to Tauragė, Lithuania, with the Lithuanian spelling of the family name being Abramavičius.

In 1940, the Soviet Union (USSR) annexed Lithuania. Just before the Nazi German invasion of the USSR, the Soviets "cleared the anti-Soviet, criminal and socially dangerous element" with whole families being sent to Siberia. Abramovich's grandparents were separated when deported. The father, mother and children – Leib, Abram and Aron (Arkady) – were in different cars. Many of the deportees died in the camps. Among them was the grandfather of Abramovich. Nachman Leibovich died in 1942 in the NKVD camp in the settlement of Resheti, Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Having lost both parents before the age of 4, Abramovich was raised by relatives and spent much of his youth in the Komi Republic in northern Russia. Abramovich is the Chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, and a trustee of the Moscow Jewish Museum. Abramovich decided to establish a forest of some 25,000 new and rehabilitated trees, in memory of Lithuania's Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, plus a virtual memorial and tribute to Lithuanian Jewry (Seed a Memory) enabling people from all over the world to commemorate their ancestors' personal stories by naming a tree and including their name in the memorial. ...

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