My father, Otto Feuer, had been a chess champion (he won the Belgian title in 1936), and his hero had always been the Russian chess champion Alexander Alekhine. One day, in the Buchenwald latrine, Otto came upon what he thought was a miracle of sorts: There on the ground was a page from a recent German chess magazine, undoubtedly discarded by an SS guard, with an article by, of all people, Alekhine. Otto’s mood soared — until he began reading.
Then he discovered that Alekhine had become a rabid anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer. The article was all about the evils of “Jewish chess.” Otto sank into an especially low depression. But then there was another uplift, because it occurred to him that if he was still capable of experiencing both joy and sorrow, it must mean that not even the Nazis could destroy his humanity.
And this awareness, that he was still human, gave him hope and the will to continue. He was liberated April 11, 1945, when American troops came to Buchenwald. Aharon Appelfeld has written that “in the Holocaust there was no room for thought or feeling….” I have a different view, based on my father’s encounter with Alekhine.
Michael J Feuer, is a dean and professor of education at The George Washington University.
Yes, the articles were published, but Alekhine himself said they were not his own beliefs, and that he was more or less forced by the Nazis to write in that manner. I do not believe him to have been a racist.
no one named Feuer has ever won the Belgian Chess Championship. It shows an O. Feuer playing in such an event only once, in 1934, when he finished 2nd to Soultanbeieff.
He’s Soviet, wasn’t he?
Yes, the articles were published, but Alekhine himself said they were not his own beliefs, and that he was more or less forced by the Nazis to write in that manner. I do not believe him to have been a racist.
According to this site:
http://users.skynet.be/fa054591/JOURNAL/CAHIER2007.pdf
no one named Feuer has ever won the Belgian Chess Championship. It
shows an O. Feuer playing in such an event only once, in 1934, when he finished 2nd to Soultanbeieff.
And according to this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Chess_Championship
the 1936 champion was either Koltanowski or O’Kelly. What is the basis for this Feuer claim?
Taylor Kingston