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. 

Yuri Averbach, 1922-2022

The legendary grandmaster, Yuri Averbakh, had recently died in Moscow, at the age of 100. We note here the post we made on his 95th birthday, and add above, again, from our collection a book signed by him to Almog Burstein. We also note Chessbase's obituary and Edward Winter's feature article about him. 

Signatures

 

The above is a set of signature of chess players who played in the 1964 Olympiad in Tel Aviv. How many can you recognize? 

The selection is from an article about the players' "signature habits" by Aryeh Lin (ph. spelling), Davar, 29.11.1964, p. 4. The author notes that in this Olympiad, the usually cagey soviet players signed more readily than in previous Olympiads, due to the "heartwarming" atmosphere at the Olympiad. He notes that Petrosian is hard to get to sign, and that in general when the soviet players do sign, they do so between other signatures, perhaps so as to not have their signature misused. Reshevsky on the other hand offered a fan to sign either in Hebrew or in English, and waited with the pen in his hand "for more customers." 

The reporter finishes with a trick he learned: to get signatures, use an envelope - not regular paper - and write a few fake signatures on it before you show it to the first "victim," who will find it hard to refuse if others already signed! 

Tunisia, Lebanon and Israel in the 1960 Olympiad

Source: Eliezer Pe'er's collection

The late Eliezer Pe'er had been with the Israeli team in the 1960 Olympiad. He had, inter alia, collected (as we have noted) signatures from all the players (with the exception of... the Israeli team!) 

This included the signatures of the Tunisian (left) and Lebanese players. What is more, not only have they signed the autograph book willingly, but Tunisian even played Israel in the event two years later, i.e., in the 1962 Olympiad, being the first time to our knowledge Israel played an Arab team in any sporting event. 

Reginald Storrs' Signature

Source: Almog Burstein

Almog Burstein forwards the following signature -- including chess content ('King's Gambit accepted... P-K4) of Sir Ronald Storrs, the first governor of Jerusalem under the British Mandate of Palestine and the founder of its first chess club. 

More Chess Signatures

Source: ebay (click on image for larger picture)

The above is the program of the Israeli 1957 chess championship. The seller wants $350 for it, which seems a rather high price. But at least it does have the signature of most (not all) of the participants, including, e.g., on the right page of the last image, Czerniak (top right), Porat (top left), Itzchak Aloni (bottom right), and Dyner (bottom left).

Still, we are beginning to see here some challenges to the "old guard", e.g., Yair Kraidman (top right, second image), Rudy Blumfeld (to left, second image) and others. 

Chess in Israel, Early 60s -- What we Can Learn from one Page

Photo: A. P. 

Above we see a picture from Itzhak Bar-Ziv's collection. It is the inside title page of the book he won in a youth ("noar", נוער) tournament, back in 1961. A few notes:

1). The book was given, as a joint 2nd-3rd prize, to Itzhak Barzovski. Bar-Ziv (lit. meaning something like "the son of the shining") is the way he changed his name into an Hebrew one. This was quite common for Jews to do in Israel at the time, much like it was common for immigrants to the USA to change their name to an English one.

2). The book has the Israeli Chess Association's Ex Libris on it. Apparently they couldn't afford -- or didn't bother -- to buy the winners of the tournament new books 

3). On the other hand, they didn't mind giving the winners books actually signed by the author -- in this case, Samuel "Sammy" Reshevsky (probably during his visit to Israel in 1958). 

I find it hard to decide whether the chess association, giving as a prize a used signed book, were being overly generous or overly cheap...

Chess Envelope (and the Identity of a "Mystery Player")

The above envelope, which was given to the ICA's chess house by Eliezer Pe'er, has the signatures of (most of) the players who participated in the 1958 international tournament in Israel--the first of its kind held in the country.

The signatures include those of Samuel "Sammy" Reshevsky, Arthur Dunkelblum, Robert Wade, Itzchak Aloni, Arie Rosenberg, Ignacy Branicki, Moshe Czerniak, Carel van der Berg, Rudy Blumfeld, Yosef Porat, Israel Dyner, and Silvan Burstein. Laszlo Szabo and Raphael Persitz did not sign.

Burstein--a "young master from France", who "played in the 1954 and 1956 Olympiads" (as Dan Klein reprts in Al Ha'Mishmar, Nov. 10th, 1958), is, for some reason, not mentioned at all in Jeremy Gaige's Chess Personalia, while chessbase's 3-million-strong 2005 database only has "S. Burstein". Klein also reports that Branicki's second surname was Grunfeld (not mentioned in Gaige or chessbase's database) and that he spoke fluent Hebrew, which he learned as a child in the cheder (Judaism's equivalent of primary school.)

Tomasz Lissowski adds (6/9/2012): 

Izaak GRYNFELD was a strong chess player in Lodz in 1930s. Nobody knows where Grynfeld spent the years of WWII. He participated several times in the championship of Poland (see wikipedia in English).
The official in Polish chess organisation in the 1950s. He translated one chess book from Russian into Polish (as I remember, it was Keres' openings manual). Ca. 1955 he changed his family name - one day he became Ignacy Branicki. It was not such a rare case, many Poles (not only of Jewish roots) did the same after the WWII, from various reasons.

Grynfeld adopted the name of aristocratic family, the prince (!) family, which produced a line of marshals, archbishops and senators. Also first name "Ignacy" was obsolete and rather typical for wealthy noble families (remember Ignacio Loyola!). His biography has many "white spots". Even his date of birth is doubtful. According to some sources Branicki was much younger than Grynfeld - but it is one person!
Mr. Lissowski describes Grynfeld's life and chess career in a two-part article, "Zapomniany Polski Olimpijczyk - Pogromca Donnera"  [Forgotten Polish Olympic Player - Donner's "Crusher"] in Vistula Chess Monthly. 

I add that changing one's name to a aristocratic one happens also in other places. There is the famous case of a Jewish immigrant in Boston, related by Isaac Asimov in Asimov Laughs Again, originally named Kabotinsky or something similar, who changed his named legally to Cabot -- a name of a very aristocratic Boston family. The Cabot family appealed, but the judge ruled that so long as he does not say or imply he is part of the famous family, he can be called by any name he wishes... 

Chess & Stamps -- Part I

There seems to be quite a connection between chess and stamps. Many people are fans of both stamp collecting and chess. These include not only the owner of the above envelope (who wishes to remain anonymous) but also Izhak Bar-Ziv (who "arrested" Tigran Petrosian) and, to name someone I do not personally know, world champion Anatoly Karpov.

This envelope is a first-day envelope of the stamps the Israeli Post Office created to commemorate the 1964 chess Olympiad. It is signed by the entire USSR team: Botvinnik, Boleslavsky, Geller, Smyslov, Petrosian, Keres, and Stein.

Six World Champions (and 50+ Grandmasters) in one Notebook

Eliezer Pe'er, the captain of the Israeli team to the 1960 Leipzig chess olympiad, came well prepared: he brought with him an autograph book and asked everyone to sign it. Most agreed.



There are the signatures of six world champions past, present and future: Mikhail Botvinnik, Max Euwe, Robert "Bobby" Fischer, Tigran Petrosian, Vassily Smyslov and Mikhail Tal. Other famous players include Salo Flohr, Svetozar Gligorić, Viktor Korchnoi, Andor Lilienthal and Miguel Najdorf, to name just a few. Above we have the Soviet team's signature. Below, the American and Argentine ones.