Actual Founding of the Palestine Chess Federation

Decleration of the founding of the Palestine Chess Association. See source below.

In a previous post we have wondered when exactly the Palestinian Chess Federation was founded, if in Nov. 1934 it already speaks of a "previous" committee of the organization. The answer is found in Mohilever's recollections, in Shachmat no. 261-262 (Feb. - March 1985), p. 35-36.

Mohilever notes that the official founding was in the 'Zidon' cafe in Tel Aviv, where 'about 30 players, mostly from Tel Aviv and a few from Jerusalem and Haifa' met on June 30th, 1934.

Israel Rosenfeld was chosen as the chairman of the organization, the two Levonsky brothers (Avraham and Nachum) as secretary and trasurer, respectively, Winz and Wexler as members, etc.; the document above includes the signatures of practically all important players or activists in Palestinian chess at the time, which naturally made the organization accepted by the players in the country in general.

They also had a foreign dignitary to endorse them. No less a personage than Salo Flohr, then (as noted before in this blog) visiting Palestine, was present, chosen as an 'honorary chairman', and signing his name first on the list (about the middle of the page in the photograph above).

Within a year, quite apart from everything else it did, the organization also had that essential issue: a masthead, with the name in English and Hebrew and two knight heads and a rook next to a checkered field:

P. S.

It would be nitpicking to go back and correct all previous mentions I made of the term, but from now on I will be careful, when relevant, to use the correct 'Palestine Chess Federation', as they masthead says, and not 'Palestinian Chess Federation'.