In 1930, Poland notched up a great success in chess when its representatives took first place in the team classification at the Chess Olympics in Hamburg. In the five-person Polish team, as many as 4 people had Jewish ancestors. Who were the chess players?

The Polish team included: Akiba Rubinstein, Ksawery Tartakower, Dawid Przepiórka, Kazimierz Makarczyk, Paulin Frydman. They won first place, gaining 48.5 points before the Hungarians who came second and the Germans third. Akiba Rubinstein, a representative of Poland of Jewish origin, won the individual classification. Interestingly, the next two places on the podium were also taken by Jews.

He loved chess but was afraid of people

Rubinstein was recognized as the inventor of the modern positional game in chess. His chess career was successful and at times he was considered the best player in the world. However, he never played a match for the world title due to… lack of the money to play such a match. He was also tormented by anthropophobia – fear of people.

French, Pole or Jew?

Ksawery Tartakower was born into a Jewish family with Polish-Austrian ancestors that converted to Catholicism. He was keen not only to play chess, but he also wrote books and articles about the “royal game”. During World War II, he fought Germans with Charles de Gaulle in France, and after the war, he represented France in chess competitions.

A brilliant baby

Dawid Przepiórka defeated the renowned chess player Jan Taubenhaus at the age of 12. He specialized in creating chess compositions. In 1940, he was arrested by the Nazi Gestapo in a Warsaw cafe where chess players met. While in custody, he gave his last lecture on chess to his fellow prisoners. Together with other Jews, he was transported by the German secret police to the largest German political prison in occupied Poland- Pawiak (about 3,000 prisoners were constantly held there during the war). He never returned from there.

Argentinian choice

The last of the mentioned Jews from the Polish team at the Olympics of 1930 was Paulin Frydman. He was considered one of the best Warsaw chess players in pre-war Poland. When WWII broke out, he was at a chess competition in Argentina and he did not come back to Europe anymore. Frydman got involved in Argentine chess life, but he did not forget about Poland. He was friends with Witold Gombrowicz, a famous Polish writer.