Edward Barley Field

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Edward Gerstenfeld ( Russian Эдуард (Эдвард) Исаакович Герстенфельд (Герштенфельд) ; * January 1915 in Lemberg (Austria-Hungary); † 1943 in Rostow-on-Don ) was an important Polish - Soviet chess master .

Life

Gerstenfeld, who was born as an Austrian citizen during the existence of Austria-Hungary , began his chess career in his Galician hometown of Lviv, where he spent childhood and youth. During her membership in the Polish state (1918-1939) she was named Lwów. In 1933 Gerstenfeld qualified for the Lwów championship for the first time. In 1935 he won this strong tournament for the first time. In the same year he moved to Łódź , which was one of the strongholds of Polish chess in the interwar period.

Gerstenfeld took part in three Polish championships (1935, 1937 and 1938), with his sixth place in 1938 being his best result. This championship was very strong because it was held as an international tournament. Vasja Pirc won ahead of Savielly Tartakower . Gerstenfeld defeated Tartakower.

In the summer of 1939, before the outbreak of the Second World War , Gerstenfeld returned to Lwów. With the beginning of the war in September 1939, the secret clause of the Hitler-Stalin Pact came into force and Soviet troops occupied eastern Galicia. This area was annexed to the Soviet Ukraine after the end of the fighting with the Polish army in autumn 1939 and the Polish Lwów was renamed the Ukrainian Lviv.

Gerstenfeld received Soviet citizenship and took part in Soviet tournaments as early as 1940. He was a participant in the Ukrainian championship in 1940, which was won by Isaak Boleslawski and then, also in 1940, winner of the USSR semi-finals in Kiev (together with Mark Stolberg ), which meant the qualification for the USSR championship in the same year, the barley field finished in 17th place. In the same year he was awarded the title of Master of Sports of the USSR , at the same time he was appointed head of the chess section of the newly founded Pioneer Palace in Lviv.

In early 1941 Gerstenfeld won the championship in Lviv and took part in the next semifinals of the USSR championship in Rostov-on-Don in June , in which 44 players, divided into four groups of 11 players, fought for a total of eight qualifying places for the national championship. After five rounds were played , Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and the tournament was canceled.

Gerstenfeld's future whereabouts are not certain. The Polish historian Tadeusz Wolsza writes that he returned to Lviv and was murdered by the Nazis at the end of 1942 either in the ghetto or in the Belzec extermination camp . Russian sources, however, state that he was killed by the Nazis in a mass shooting of Jews in Rostov-on-Don in 1943.

swell

  1. ↑ I. Berditschewski: Schachmatnaja ewrejskaja enziklopedja, Moscow 2016 (Russian)
  2. ^ Rolf Voland: Strategists in the hinterland. The USSR chess 1941-45, Schwieberdingen 1998, p. 36
  3. ↑ T. Wolsza : Arcymistrzowie, mistrzowie, amatorzy ... Słownik biograficzny szachistów polskich, Volume 5, Warsaw 2007, p. 41. (Polish)
  4. ↑ AE Karpow (editor-in-chief): Schachmaty enziklopeditscheski slowar, Moscow 1990 (Russian)
personal data
SURNAME Barley field, Edward
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Эдуард (Эдвард) Исаакович Герстенфельд (Герштенфельд) (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-Soviet chess player
DATE OF BIRTH January 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Lviv
DATE OF DEATH 1942 or 1943
Place of death Rostov on Don