Dear Chess Friends,
As Woit’s close friend and attorney of many years, people are asking me about his passing. I have spoken with Woit’s physician and the medical examiner. Woit did not die of liver failure or alcoholism. He died of a perforated intestine, and massive bleeding. If he had been helped sooner, he would have lived. He had lost so much blood by the time the ambulance was called, it was too late to save him.
Some people, myself included, have been upset by Woit’s obituary stating he died of liver problems.
Woit loved his son Joseph very much and saw him as often as possible.
Finally, Woit was very concerned about his mother and often sent her money to live. It was his dying wish that someone would take care of his mother. Donations for Woit’s mother, Tamara, can be sent to:
The Alexander Wojtkiewicz Memorial Fund
care of Law Offices of Elizabeth Karnazes
P.O. Box 4747
Foster City, CA 94404
(650) 345-9200
Thank-you for your help.
Elizabeth Karnazes
There are so many inaccuriacies in posts about GM Aleks Wojtkiewicz that I am very glad Yuri Ehlvest (Jaan’s brother) is working now on Aleks’ biography. Jaan Ehlvest knew Aleks better than anybody else and was his friend always. For example, Aleks never was a US citizen, and his mother lives in Riga, Latvia, not in Poland.
I guess alcohol kills in more than one way. just a technicality whether the liver or the intestine goes first.
you can not be an alcohol sponge and expect the body to do well.
Aleks quit drinking well before World Open. But the main point in the original post is:”If he had been helped sooner, he would have lived…” If Aleks had a caring RESPONSIBLE friend with him when its all happened , he would have lived.
Hi all,
To be honest, what GM Wojtkiewicz died of is not of importance — that US chess has lost a gifted player is. What is it with our country that we have to slam our talented (in death as well as life) with vicious degradation and here-say? I don’t know what agenda’s individuals who do such things have, but I think it is shameful, and I feel sorry for them.
On a possitive note, it is nice to see that chess gateway responded immediately to this statement by Elizabeth, and put on a nice acknowledgement. I hope that other websites show the same guts and sensitivity.
Timothy Forbes, USA
Hey Svetlana, I resent that. I lived with him for three years and I begged him to go to a doctor three years ago. I asked him every day to go to a doctor. He flat out refused. I’m not irrisponsible, you weren’t here, you don’t know. The fact is, he hit the end stage 6 months ago, and I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on supplements to rebuild his liver. We had a doctor COME to the house, and all he could do was advise him not to take tylenol. I was there when he died, I rode with him in the ambulance. They gave him four pints of blood and two bags of fluid, the doctor said that when you drink for years, like he did, you develop vericose veins in your GI system. He was bleeding in more than one place. I shouldn’t be blamed for his death, you bitch, you don’t know what happened. You have NO idea how sick he was. Or maybe you do, you obviously saw him at the world open. I was the only one keeping him going, me and my vitamins, without me, he would have been dead three years ago. So screw you and your blame. You don’t know a goddamn thing.
The fact is, Aleks WAS advised by a doctor, how could they know this would happen? It’s like blaming a third party for something they had no control over. I had no control over Aleks’ intestines, nor the veins located in his intestines. I DID call 911, I WAS there when he died. He died in my arms, and for YOU to blame me for his death, calling me irrisponsible… why don’t you just stab me in the heart. Just throw darts at me, why don’t you? If you are SO high and Mighty, that YOU have some special knowledge from where ever you were on the planet that day, Please, Do Tell me what I should have done differently…Otherwise, Go FUCK yourself. I took him to the hospital, a man, and I brought him home in a box. You HAVE NO Idea the kind of pain I’m in at this moment. Maybe you are doing this on purpose. We ALL lost him. Throwing these accusations at me like I’m some kind of irrisponsible monster isn’t going to bring him back, you slag-whore. And this Fund, I have receipts for EVERYTHING. I am not making money off his death. ALL monies went to the “process” and I can’t pay the electric bill. I do not have access to his accounts, and I’m going to have to move in a couple of months, because I can’t afford to live here, because Jaan abandonded me. I have my OWN job, and NO, I’m NOT a waitress and I am fully capable of managing a funeral fund. I don’t need some slag-whore named Svetlana, who probably screwed him once or twice at some tournament telling me I’m irrisponsible.
I’m so sorry to see this even come up. Amber did the best, the very best she could. And she’s grieving deeply. This thread was like a knife to her heart, and thus to mine.
Alex was a grown man and he was also his own self, he wasn’t a small child.
I’m with Amber this week and I’m seeing what she’s going through. This thread is dark and feels really really bad to me. I hope it will stop now. Amber is such a dear person. She’s been upset, obviously, by this thread. I’m incredibly sad by it.
Like she said, we ALL lost Alex. we could play the “what if” game from now until the cows come home, but that won’t help anyone. We could over analyze, make wild guesses, conjecture, accuse, and so on, but nothing will change anything.
Please don’t add to everyone’s grief. And please treat Alex’s memory with dignity.
Resectfully,
Janet
I’m not sure why his total liver failure is being covered up in the obfuscating “Important Clarification”. It was a consequence of heavy drinking, yes. We who knew him knew he was capable of prodigious alcohol intake. At the World Open, and for some months previously, he had ascites and spontaneous bleeding from venous endpoints that are consistent with the liver no longer functioning. This took its toll on his appearance, doctors and non-doctors alike noticed the changes at the World Open. At the World Open, I was standing around with Nick DeFirmian and Wojo mentioned he had taken a breather from drinking to give his liver some recovery time. As we know, this is well intentioned but livers don’t recover in that manner, unfortunately. The intestinal blockage could well have been caused by the stasis (blood backup) and clotting (obstruction) since the liver is not processing the expected blood volume per time unit. To sum up, he had a perforated instestine as well as end-stage liver disease. To suggest that he only had a perforated intestine and to wipe away the alcohol abuse is strange obfuscation – it’s not necessary to sanitize biographies in this day and age. His alcohol use and effervescent personality lent truth to the trite adage ‘he burned his candle at both ends’ that we hear so often about celebrities.
It is important to note that these facts completely refute the ‘svetlana’ accusations; Amber didn’t do anything wrong; the damage was already done.
I am writing again to clarify the facts around GM Alexander Wojtkiewicz’s death. The information conveyed in my recent letter came straight from Alexander Wojtkiewicz’s personal physician and the medical examiner who performed his autopsy. Yes, Sasha’s liver was damaged by alcohol, but liver failure was not the cause of his death. The medical examiner informed me that the time Sasha spent in the Russian prison camp combined with years of poor nutrition contributed to his intestinal problems. The bottom line is that Sasha had lost so much blood by the time he was taken to the hospital, that even if he had lived, he would likely have had permanent brain damage. Many Grandmasters drink prodigious amounts of alcohol and live far longer than 43 years. It is an unfortunate side effect of loneliness and constant travel. Throwing darts and arrows at the deceased is not appropriate and is greatly offensive to those of us who knew and loved Sasha. IM Mark Ginsberg was not a friend of Sasha’s and is not physician. Sasha deserves to be remembered for his contributions to chess and his joy de vivre, not petty inaccurate comments about the cause of his untimely death. I believe Sasha’s lifelong friend, GM Alex Shabalov, said it best,
“He traveled from tournament to tournament, thinking little about money or a conventional lifestyle, only about playing chess and enjoying himself. He really lived his life as if there was no tomorrow.”
Rest in peace my friend.
Best wishes, Elizabeth Karnazes
This article written by his lifelong friend Alexander Shabalov was very nice, http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3256
however it makes several references to the part that alchohal played in his life. This article is not desrespectful to Aleks in any way, it just shines some light on the way he lived his life, and yes he should be remembered for his joy and contribution to chess and I believe that he is being remembered for that. His untimely death is very sad indeed, but his liver damage unfortunately made a great contribution to his death.
Elizabeth Karnazes wasn’t at the World Open where he was observed by doctors and non-doctors alike to have ascites. He was also complaining of venous end-point spontaneous bleeding. These two things mean liver failure. There is no ambiguity. I am not sure why she is taking her revisionist position (a misguided attempt to sanitize?), but yes I was friendly with Wojo and that’s why he often come up to chat between rounds. The facts stand as I said them. Here is Amber Berglund’s quote again ‘ The fact is, he hit the end stage 6 months ago ‘ which is accurate. The revisionism leads to unfortunate baseless accusations like “svetlana”‘s.
You can also see a nice game I played with Wojo back in 1990, which I posted on chessgames.com. He was a very nice guy and very affable.
It is so sad that such a fine chessplayer and, from what I read, a nice person is lost to us. My condolences to all who knew him. I personally did not know GM Wojkiewicz, but some general comments may be useful:
I am struck by the need on the part of some to blame. No one can make a drinker stop drinking. No amount of caring will work on someone who wants to keep drinking. It is up to the alcoholic whether he or she will abstain.
Furthermore, acute hemorrhage from varices indicates an advanced state of cirrhosis. The development of varices is due to high pressure in the veins of the esophagus from “portal hypertension”, a bad complication of cirrhosis. Variceal bleeding is a somewhat random event–acute bleeding may not necessarily be provoked by anything in particular. The only cure for cirrhosis itself, an irreversible condition that occurs when it can no longer effectively regenerate, is liver transplantation, although some meds will help a little.
Lastly I would point out that acute hemorrhage from esophageal varices has a very high mortality rate. Death is a tragedy, but there is no need for finger-pointing, many patients with a very brisk bleed will die quickly despite aggressive care.
Sorry to get so clinical, but what with the questions that have been raised, some things needed to be said.
Andrew Waller MD
Thank you to Mark G. and Andrew W. for your expertise and truthful assessment of the situation. Aleks was a great guy, and he’ll be terribly missed by a lot of people. In our grief we need not lay blame, but just recognize that he’s gone, learn from his passing, and remember him well.
He wouldn’t stop drinking. I would pour alcohol down the drain and he would just go out and buy more alcohol. It didn’t help that part of Eastern European culture is to bring a bottle of booze with you when you visit someone’s house. I would send people away with their bottles of Vodka. All I could do was give him B-Vitamins and phosphatidylcholine. He still kept drinking. Even when he said he wasn’t drinking anymore, he would tell me he was going out…”I need some gas” and he’d be gone for an hour. The next day he said “I’m going out to buy gas…” and I thought “He just bought gas yesterday.” I decided to cruise the local bars and I found him there, drinking scotch from a plastic cup and chatting up a shop-worn, beat-up prostitute in a red dress. I yelled at him “What the hell are you doing in here? You’ve got a fucking liver problem!” He stopped talking to the prostitute and said “Ah, well, I’m just having one.”
“You know why they have yellow tinted lights in here? To cover up the fact that they are killing people. You’re fucking jaundiced, you asshole,” I said.
“I’ll leave when I am ready. Go home,” he said.
“No.”
“Ah, shit,” he said, drinking the rest of it like a shot.
I pulled him out of there as the red-neck next to him said to me “…A man’s gonna do, what a man’s gonna do, you can’t change him, sweetheart.”
“Fuck you,” I shot back, and continued to pull him out of there.
So, no one really understands how difficult it was for me. I feel I failed him, because I didn’t want him to die. I didn’t want him to die and I lose him every day, over and over again in my mind.
No one is going to read this post, probably, because Wojt is old news by now. But I loved him. Even with all the betrayals, and trust me, he DID betray me, many, many times. But I loved him anyway.
Amber Berglund
Man, I heard some stories about Voit from many people. I met him several times on ICC and in real life. We were gambling in Foxwoods during tournament once. I was winning and I was like “Yes!!”. And he said “Did you eat shit when you were a child?”. That was funny. And he was a funny. He was playing drunk once in D.C. 30 min Action Championship and won the game with black against GM Timoshenko. He had this manly aura around him – like nothing could break him. Like Jack Nicholson. But when you fuck with your health one time to many it gets back at you.
He may have been a nice man who was misunderstood, but whatever you do, don’t send money to Elizabeth Karnazes – she’s a rogue lawyer.
Another anonymous: ‘Anonymous said…
He may have been a nice man who was misunderstood, but whatever you do, don’t send money to Elizabeth Karnazes – she’s a rogue lawyer.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 10:04:00 AM CDT’
Wow. Karnazes has just been disbarred by California.