Litvak Roman Abramovich is still working on the 140-meter-long yacht he bought which will have eight decks and a helicopter pad. No amount of money was spared either on the two advanced electric motors which will make this the most powerful yacht in the world when construction is complete.

Roman Abramovich’s grandparents came from Jurbarkas and Tauragė and that’s why we call him a Litvak. Before the war, 80% of vessels in Jurbarkas belonged to Jews. This yacht is a tribute to his grandmother Tauba Liya Berkover. The Berkover surname means ship owner in Yiddish. In June of 1941 his grandfather Nakhman Abramovich was arrested and sent to the gulag in Krasnoyarsk. That’s where he also died. In 1942 his grandmother and her children were deported to Siberia. His grandmother wasn’t allowed to return to Lithuania right up to her death in 1960.

The yacht, christened Solaris, is almost ready for sea trials and the 54-year-old owner of the Chelsea soccer team should take delivery by this summer, according to the Sun newspaper in Great Britain. Lloyd Werft shipyard in Bremerhaven, Germany, is building it. The hangar where work is taking place in bigger than Buckingham Palace, …

Full story in Lithuanian here.