Credit: ebay.
Our long-time acquaintance and chess player, Itzhak Bar-Ziv, was already featured in this blog concerning both the chess olympiad and stamps (searching for "Bar Ziv" or similar terms will find the posts). We note now that he had told us he expanded his interest in chess stamps and is making a serious collection of it. We "made a date" to see it, hopefully some will be posted on this blog soon...
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.
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.
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.
Gligoric (l.) vs. Spassky, 1965. Source: see below.
Source: see below
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Biographical articles about chess players by other players are, of course, very common, but Herbert Halsegger notes an interesting example. Not only are both the subject and author Jewish - which is hardly surprising in chess! - but the author of the article about Edward Lasker is a female master, namely the Jewish Mona Karff. We should note that as we mentioned elsewhere, Edward Lasker had, in the same year, visited the chess olympiad in Haifa, 1976.
The Israel Chess Federation had posted a series of photos of Israeli players and teams, mostly in international events such as the 2022 Olympiad. The photos are by Dr. Mark Liebschitz [ph. spelling]. Of particular interest is the above image - what seems to be a (small) double blindfold simul (3 boards each) in the Israeli Knesset, or parliament.
P. S.
For some reason the above paragraph's outline will not follow the usual one used in this blog, sorry!|
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Edward Winter notes that Yosef Porat was the victim of an anti-Turton move (or combination) by Bent Larsen in the 1956 Olympiad. What is an anti-Turton? As Heidenfeld notes (see Winter's article for details):
It consists in forcing the attacker who wishes to double two pieces on the same gait in such a way as to have the stronger piece in front and the weaker behind (called the Turton in the jargon of problemists) into playing the weaker piece across the so-called “critical square”... and thus into reversing the planned line-up.
The game is:
Porat, Yosef - Larsen, Bent
12th Chess Olympiad, Moscow, 1956, 6th round (preliminaries)
Source: Olimpbase.
1.Nf3 f5 2.c4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.b3 Bg7 5.Bb2 d6 6.d4 c6 7.e3 Qa5 8.a3 O-O 9.Be2 e5 10.b4 Qc7 11.d5 h6 12.c5 e4 13.Nd4 dxc5 14.Qb3 cxd4 15.d6+ Be6
We have noted in this blog before how the Palestinian (Jewish) team in 1939 naturally refused to play with the German team, and that this cause a serious problem until Grau "saved the day." Porat's eyewitness account was reported here.
Porat said that the Palestine team was "not invited to the negotiations" and that "the organizers notified us that the German team objected with the claim that Palestine, as a Mandate, is not in a state of war with Germany, so they see no reason to cancel the match!"
The master's thesis noted in the previous post (see there for credits) sheds more light on the matter. It refers to a letter from the captain of the German team, Becker, to Max Bluemich, originally posted online by Chessbase in 2008. In it, Becker does indeed inform Blumlich that the German team claimed Palestine "is not a British colony, but a League of Nations mandate" and therefore formally not in war with Germany.
It is clear from Becker's letter that the real reason for his objection is that a 2:2 draw without play with Palestine would benefit other teams (esp. Argentina) which could expect a better result by playing the relatively weak Palestinian team. What is also clear, and more surprising, is that Becker notes "The Jews [i.e., Palestinian team] came with the Argentinians to our apartment to appeal to our sense of sportsmanship" to convince Becker to agree to the 2:2 draw!
Porat does not mention any such meeting in his recollections. It may be that he was not part of it, or that he wished to hide any such informal connection with the German team. It is clear, from Becker's letter, that the Palestinian team would not have played the German team under any circumstances.
Another interesting point, also mentioned in the letter and pointed out in the master's thesis, is that Becker complained that Alekhine, the French team's captain (and of course world champion) was very much against the German team, and forbade "his people" from any contact with them - with the absurd result that the Palestinian Jews came to talk with Becker while Alekhine and the French did not.
Does this prove Alekhine was not an antisemite? It depends on his motives. He could have been opportunistically trying to harm Germany for the benefit of France's chess team. He could have been angry at Germany's aggression and boycotted the Germans out of principle. Or he could have done so out of protest at the German treatment of the Jews.
The latter two motives, given Alekhine's later behavior, seem unlikely. But this behavior does support the claim that Alekhine, while an opportunist, was not actually devoted to Nazism - or for any other ideology for that matter - but rather would do whatever he thought would benefit him at the time.
But how could the Jewish team come to meet a man who ended his letter with "Heil Hitler"? It seems that Becker was no fanatical Nazi. Like all of the rest of the German team, he remained in Argentina during the war. Nothing in his biography suggests particular Nazi sympathies. But he was writing in 1939 to a man who was an ideological Nazi, and the "Heil Hitler" signature was more or less compulsory in such situations.
