Those who turn to page eight of this thread will see that I was answering a question about strong Jewish chess players. Robert Dale was asking why there are so many, which Jack Rudd and I took to mean for the past as well as the present. I gave an indication that a big majority of the very strongest Russian chess players of today are not obviously of Jewish origin.George Szaszvari wrote:How wonderfully coy of you, Simon! You yourself expanded on what was earlier postulated in this thread on a matter
raised by several other posters here discussing Jews in chess, with the inevitable reference to anti-Semitism.
Neither Hitler nor Lenin was a strong chess player.
A man's ethnic origins are a matter of supreme indifference to me. Do we have things in common? Do we get on? Those are the sorts of things I value. If we have a similar background, then it is likely that we will have a subject to share, but that is all the allowance I make for ethnicity.
This irrelevancy was brought up by George. He is quite entitled to believe any theory going, but that doesn't mean that others have to engage in a conversation about it. There may be better Internet groups for that sort of thing.George Szaszvari wrote:Adolf was mentioned as a leading anti-Semite of modern history who was very probably part Jewish himself.
It was of interest to George. It has no bearing on why there are, or were, so many strong Jewish chess players.George Szaszvari wrote:... it was of interest to the run of the subject then under discussion, which might have spawned yet another sub-thread, tending to be of interest to people of my age (and older) and background, but nobody seemed able or willing ("Adolf fatigue"...?)
George is perfectly entitled to start a thread on whether Hitler was part Jewish. I'd consider it to be in extremely poor taste and I certainly will not post to it. He might, however, consider giving proper references from serious authors, not that there are any for this.
There is no "supposed" about it. He did. He was no grandmaster. Given it is not something of interest to me, at least not at the moment, I don't propose to chase up the references. As I recall, it is mentioned in Adam Ulam's book on Lenin, although whether it is in the index must be doubtful. If it is not in the index, it is best to start reading from early in the biography, when Lenin was a teenager, or possibly early twenties: he played chess against family members. There may be on the Internet somewhere a photo of Lenin playing against Maxim Gorky on Capri.George Szaszvari wrote:Although Vladimir Ilich was supposed to have played chess