Austrian Refugees in Switzerland

Source: see link below.

Mr. Herbert Halsegger notified us of a 1938 video of presumably Jewish Austrian refugees in Switzerland, where they are seen, among other things (at the 06:30 mark) playing chess.

Postcard from Oren to Barav

 
Credit: Prof. Ami Barav

Prof. Barav presented us with the following postcard, to his father (Israel Rabinovich-Barav) from Menachem Oren, with the signatures of the Soviet team in the Amsterdam Olympiad. 

The signatures, as identified by Mr. Kosimov, are:

1. Botvinnik

2. Smyslov

3. Bronstein

4. Kotov

5. Keres

One of the signatures in black, just below Smyslov's, is that of Igor Bondarevsky. The other member of the Soviet team not represented here is Geller. 

A Chess Set Made in Hiding

 

Source: Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Mr. Herbert Halsegger notifies us of a new exhibit in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews: a chess set made in hiding by Pola Najder during the war. The details are in the link above. 

A Good Photo of the Soviet Team, Amsterdam 1954

 
Credit: see below

Prof. Ami Barav notifies us of the following good photograph of the soviet team, Amsterdam, 1954. From right to left: Bronovski (administrator, holding the cup), Botvinnik, Keres, Bronstein, Smyslov, Geller, Kotov. 

Chess Poem

 

Source: see below

The same book mentioned in the previous post, Eliahu Shahaf's Israel Chess Championship 1961/62, also has a chess poem by H. Ben Shlomo on p. 104. The readers of this blog have done nothing to deserve a translation of this poem, although, to judge by the scenes described, it is not a poem about this tournament, but about the Amsterdam Olympiad, 1954. 

The poem mentions in particular the game Botvinnik - Porat and the international scene, and the claim that the whole Olympiad was really an "internal Jewish battle," despite the various flags, due to the large number of Jews on the leading teams. The poem ends with the claim that the prize "stayed in the family": that is, with the USSR team, three of whose players (Botvinnik, Bronstein and Geller) were Jews. Perhaps the author believed that Smyslov was also Jewish.

Chess Advertisements, Continued

 

Source: see below

Advertisements in old chess books - using a chess theme, of course - are quite common. Here is one, from the inner back cover of Eliahu Shahaf's (editor), Alifut Israel Be'shachmat 1961/2 (Tel Aviv: Mofet, 1962). It is an advertisement for the Egged bus company: "The right move - a trip in Egged." 

The book has quite a few advertisements, in both Hebrew and English. A large majority of the advertisements, for some reason, were for banks or insurance companies.

Photos

Itzchak Aloni

Yosef Porat

Menachem Oren

Eliahu A. Mandelbaum

Israel Yosef Keniazer

Yosef Dobkin

Moshe Czerniak

Shlomo Smiltiner

Source: see below

Sometimes, it is good to remember that chess players are also people, and to find photos of how they looked - or at least, how they looked to the public. Above are photos of the Israeli players of the 1952, 1954, and 1956 Olympiads as given in Mandelbaum and Perstiz's Israel Be'olympiadot Ha'shachmat [Israel in the Chess Olympiads] (Tel Aviv: Mofet, May 1958). They all seem - to judge by the sets and clocks - from the olympiads in which they participated, but this is tentative. 

Photos are, respectively, from the following pages:

Aloni - 90; Porat - 93; Oren - 89; Mandelbaum - 92; Keniazer - 95; Dobkin - 91; Czerniak - 94; Smiltiner - 92. 

Why this order? The photos are from a section of endings they played, and are arranged by the Hebrew alphabetical order, with Oren first and Keniazer last.

A Nice Combination by Macht

 

Source: see below.

This ending, from an undated tournament game between Alexander Macht (White) and Moshe Blass is given by Moshe Czerniak in his Book of Chess, p. 77. The annotations are Czerniak's, illustrating the issue of a critical square:

1.Bxg6+ fxg6 2.Qxg6+ Kh8 3.Nf5 Bd4! 

This move seem to stop White's attack. After 4.Nxh6 Rxe1+ 5.Rxe1 Rf8 6.Nf7+ Rxf7 7.Qxf7 Qxg3+, White will have to work hard to draw. 

4.Re5! 

The winning move. If 4...Bxe5 3.Rd7 and mate in a few moves. If 4...Rxe5?? 5.Qxg7#. The fatal critical square e5 decided the game.

4...Ne6 5.Rxd4! cxd4 6.Rxe6 Black resigned (0-1).

Czerniak's Opinion of Bishops vs. Knights

Source: amazon.com

From Moshe Czerniak's Book of Chess, 1967 edition, p. 186 (my translation):

"It is usual to consider the knight and the bishop as equal in value. But it is known to all that in the opening, the knight is slightly better, while in the ending, the bishop is. The knight is therefore the most active piece in stormy attacks, especially when both knights cooperate." 

Any dissenters? 

Multi-Lingual

 

Source: Czerniak's Book of Chess, pp. 350-351

We have already noted in this blog (see link above) Moshe Czerniak's Book of Chess. One more interesting tidbit is Czerniak's well-know linguistic abilities. The book contains a six-language chess terms dictionary - in Hebrew, English, French, Spanish, German and Russian. Czerniak did, indeed, speak all of these languages. 

The Squares of the City - and Its Predecessors

Source: Wikipedia

An interesting science fiction novel about chess, by John Brunner, is The Squares of the City. This particular book is interesting for three reasons. First, it was nominated for the Hugo award in 1966. Second, it is based on an actual game, to wit, a game between Steinitz and Chigorin in 1892, as Wikipedia (see link above) notes. 

A third point of interest is that the idea of using a particular chess game for a science fiction novel is not quite new. One example that predates Brunner is Beyond the Void by "John E. Muller" (R. Lionel Fanthorpe), a notorious hack writer who turned out most of the novels for the notorious "Badger Books" series, as detailed in Down the Badger Hole by Debbie Cross. It is a retelling of The Tempest on an alien planet. Cross notes: 

But lazy old Shakespeare couldn’t provide enough plot for the terrifying needs of a Badger novel, even after eleven pages of small print detailing every single move of the chess game between Darmina and Ferdin[and].

In a 1961 novel, The Forbidden Planet (no relation to the famous movie), the chess metaphor is even more obvious, notes Cross: 

The “sixty-four habitable planets federated to the Intergalactic Convention and explain the spacegoing capabilities of certain alien races, with Garaks able to teleport only along diagonals and Pralos along grid lines”, while “Anything a Pralos or Garak could do a Gishgilk could do”, and Zurgs not only leap askew through hyperspace but have horse-like faces, and... One can only admire, and even more so when in Chapter Ten the human pawns realize that the situation strangely resembles a forgotten Earth game – enabling the author to have them explain the moves to each other all over again... 

It should be added that Edward Winter's "Chess in Fiction" article also gives other examples of awful science fiction use of chess, in particular Barry Malzberg's Tactics of Conquest, in which the chess content might have been, a reader points out, deliberately bad, as a literary experiment. 

The same, to a degree, can be said of Fanthorpe: he never took his Badger novels seriously and used them as a joke, for example having in one novel "Suessydo" and his wife "Epolenep," with the novel ending with "Suessydo" using a heavy blaster, instead of a bow, to get rid of Epolenep's unwanted suitors.  

Science Fiction and Chess, Again

Source: see below

The above is the opening of "the Chessmen," a short story by William G. Shepherd. It was published in The Best of Omni Science Fiction vol. 2 (1981), with the painting by Rene Magritte. 

It is a story of a special set of chessmen where a set of chessmen - Soviet-style, with workers vs. capitalists - take on (in effect) a life of their own so that the capitalists always win, no matter what the skill of the players, with interesting results. 

The Old Tropes Again

Bobby Fischer in 1962 (credit: Wikipedia)

Edward Winter had noted, for example, in his 'once' article, many cases of unsubstantiated chess stories and rumors. A common target for these rumors is Bobby Fischer. His notorious behavior and, later in life, apparent insanity, made him a common target. 

The following web page, for example, has both suggestions that Fischer's antisemitism was due to his discovery that his presumed father, Hans-Gerhart Fischer, who divorced his mother and abandoned the family, was Jewish. (It is now known that Fischer's biological father was probably Paul Nemenyi. Nemenyi was also Jewish but he took interest in Fischer and helped his mother financially.) This is done without any evidence, apparently on general "Freudian" grounds. 

To add to this, the web page also repeats the story about Bernstein facing being rescued at the last minute from execution after playing a game of chess for his life against the officer in charge, a story that is also doubtful.

This would be understandable if the web page in question was that of a private person or a hobbyist, but the web page belongs to no less than the Museum of the Jewish People, perhaps the most important museum for Jewish history in the world.

Chess Book Covers, Redux

Credit: see here.

We discussed art and chess in Science Fiction before, for example here, but here is an interesting example of a futurist non-fiction chess theme. The work is by the well-known computer technology artist Robert Tinney, best known for his cover art for Byte magazine. This cover is from October 1978. 

Chess, the Musical

 

Image credit: CHESS | Official Broadway Site

Chess - the musical - is enjoying a revival on Broadway right now. Reviews seem mixed. The New Criterion's review (February 2026, by Karl Smith) notes that "its story has always been a clunker despite many attempts at reworking it over the past forty years. And yet it continues to thrive because of its many top-notch songs." Certainly the songs, as Edward Winter notes in his review, are the high point.  

Smith considers the lyrics themselves "flat" because the story is a clunker, but "Ulvaeus and Andersson exhibited a thrilling breadth, saluting Italian opera in “Merano” and devising the appropriately soaring and well-titled “Anthem.”" 

Not knowing much about chess history, Smith misses much of the subtlety of the lyrics, with their many ironic references to chess history, fables about its origin, famous players, and so on. But while such knowledge is necessary for fully appreciating the songs, the lyrics are not obscure or insulting - or "flat" - to the general audience. Tim Rice, after all, was not writing the musical for the exclusive enjoyment of chess historians! 

Smith's bottom line? "In an era when most Broadway shows fail to deliver even one memorable number, Chess offers easily half a dozen. Intermingled with the soggy drama is an enthralling concert." Agreed about the memorable songs; as for the "soggy drama," I quote Winter again for the defense: Chess is "no less ‘fun’ than earlier musicals about such rib-tickling subjects as Argentine dictators and crucifixions." 

Perhaps it's significant that it is just these two musicals (Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar) that Smith compares to Chess in his review. He thinks that in all three the plot is a mere excuse for the musical numbers. But even if they are, all three also deserve their success for their memorable songs alone. 

Unexpected Discoveries

 

Aron Nimzowitsch. Credit: Wikipedia.

Sometimes chess discoveries just happen. A close relative (who shall remain nameless for privacy reasons) regularly visits an old woman (ditto) every second weekend. The old woman keeps speaking about how she had a "famous chess player" in her family. 

Since "famous" and "chess player" are very relative terms - especially when, as in this case, the old woman is from Eastern Europe - I paid no particular attention but asked the relative to ask on her next visit, just in case. 

The relative sent me a message the other day. "He was her grandmother's brother. He had a weird name... something like 'Nimzowitsch'?! Does that mean anything to you?" The relative also mentioned the old women showed her a book the player wrote, in case that helps me out. 

The Second(?) Jewish Chess Periodical

Source and details: see below

Our correspondent, Terje Kristiansen, notes that the latest (February 2025) 64 has a very interesting article about a discovery by Ilya Pechenin: "Unfinished Opening: The First Chess Newspaper in Yiddish." (pp. 86-89). The front page of the first issue is reproduced above, taken from p. 86. 

This seems to be indeed an important discovery. Keats' Chess in Jewish History and Hebrew Literature ends in 1840, and the first newspaper column (as opposed to magazine) in Hebrew, to our knowledge, is from 1888, and this magazine is not that long afterwards. However, as it is from 1913 (as Pechenin notes) another Yiddish-language magazine - which only lasted one issue - must take the prize. 

It was published in New York in 1906, and was published by Charles Jaffe, as discovered a while ago by our frequent correspondent, Moshe Roytman. The details can be found at the end of Edward Winter's feature article about Jaffe, or in Chess Notes #11875. 

More on Chess Caricatures in Israel

Our frequent correspondent, Philip Jurgens, had pointed out a few mistakes in our previous post about caricatures. We use this post to thank him, and to note a few more points about chess and caricatures in Israel. 

Unsurprisingly, in Israel, a country in a constant state of political and military turmoil, caricatures about chess deal almost exclusively with political or military issues, where the players are politicians, generals, or figures representing Israel or other nations. 

For example, from Ha'aretz, we have the following caricature (by Amos Biderman) illustrating an article by Yossi Klein (28 May, 2025) about Netanyahu's political dilemma with the IDF generals (the piece he is holding) and his right-wing coalition partner, Itamar Ben Gvir (on the board):

Or, here, a caricature of a "simultaneous game" by Shlomo Cohen (1 February 2024) for Israel Ha'yom, with Netanyahu playing both against Hamas and Ben-Gvir: 

Shlomo Cohen, incidentally, is apparently a chess player, as the chess motif is often seen in his caricatures. For example, one caricature has Netanyahu as the king and everybody else as a pawn in the Likud conference (Netanyahu's party); another has Trump starting a simultaneous game with the middle east leaders - with the boards set up correctly, the single player playing white, and both the board's orientation and the pieces being set up correctly...

Dr. Moritz Lewitt

 

Source: Weiner Shachzeitung, December 1907, p. 409

Our frequent correspondent Herbert Halsegger notifies us of his research finding about the Jewish player and composer Dr. Moritz Lewitt (link in German). His best rating was 2427 (Berlin, 1891). This rating would not be that high today, but, as Edward Winter notes in his (devastating) review of Warriors of the Mind, ratings favor the moderns, and in any case comparison between generations is at unreliable. At any rate he was strong enough to co-author a book with (fellow Jew) Mieses.

To all this Mr. Halsegger also adds the picture above, where Lewitt (no. 2) is standing next to the young Spielmann (no. 4). He was not a player in the tournament in question (the Jubilee tournament of the Berlin Chess Association) but, as the caption to the photo notes, as the chairman of the association. 

Yemenite Metalwork Set

 

Our frequent correspondent Terje Kristiansen had sent us photos of the following interesting chess set. It is, to the best of his collecting friend's knowledge, an example of Jewish Yemenite sculpturing in metal wire. They ask why the king and queen seem identical. 

It seems likely that the answer is one of two: either the set is for decoration so the exact replication of distinct pieces was less important, or the artist, presumably a Yemenite Jew from Israel and therefore likely an observant Jew, didn't want to sculpture the traditional cross on top of the king. 

Edited to add: as Mr. Ole Drønen, the collector, and others noted in a correction to me, one can in fact tell the difference between the king and the queen, and the cross has little to do with it. It is simply a French Régence set, which has no cross on the king. Dronen then adds:

Here are two pictures that maybe show the difference between the king and the queen better. The piece to the left is the king... There are many other variants of the style, and they were made in many countries in Europe and for a very long time...But Régence pieces became much less common when Staunton pieces became the international standard in 1924. 

The style was also used in other parts of the world for a long time, especially in French influenced areas. Kings with a cross is primarily connected to Staunton sets. Also other styles could have a king with a cross, but most other European and English styles normally featured kings without a cross.

We thank Dronen for the additional information and the correction.