1924-1996
He was born in Russia, Feb 2 1924. He was persecuted because he was a Jew, because he dared to speak of being one. His daughter emigrated to the US, and he lost his job as a professor of Physics at Dushanbe because of it. His wife also, a physician of 35 years specializing in internal medicine, lost her job. He was a chess teacher, yet that also was made difficult for him to continue to do. At age 64 he came here, starting life all over again among strangers, in a country whose langauge he couldn’t speak.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with the story: a man, embittered by injustice, filled with a desire for revenge, ignores the strangers around him and only cares about himself. I could write that story, but then I wouldn’t be writing about Roman.
There was a stir at the club one night. A frail, small man had sat down to play. Some of the club’s sharks appeared, sensing fresh meat, and circled for the kill. We’ve all seen that scene as well: the sharks come by, gobble their prey with a few quick bites, and move on to other morsels. That night, after the sharks moved on, there was the little man, still sitting there, smiling. And winning.
And Winning. Roman went on to win the state title three consecutive years, as well as almost every other Wisconsin tournament in sight. Chessplayers are supposed to decline when they reach his age; someone forgot to tell Roman that, I guess.
There are a lot of words to describe Roman, most of them old-fashioned and out of place today. Words like Brave. No, not the larger-than-life, in-your-face, Harrison-Ford-movie kind of bravery. This is the quiet, old-fashioned kind that doesn’t play well on the silver screen but feels quite at home with words like Integrity and Honor. The kind that insists on doing the Right Thing for no other reason than it is the Right Thing. The kind that doesn’t need an audience. The kind that Gets Things Done.
He spoke little if any english, but that really didn’t matter. Once, I was sitting alone in the tournament room, going over a complicated middlegame position from last round’s game, when a small hand reached down and shifted a piece to a new square. I was in the middle of analysis, and had been shifting pieces around; when I went back to the game position I’d put that piece on the wrong square. The hand had put it back where it belonged. I looked up and there was Roman. He made a move on the board, and I looked at it. It was bad; I’d considered that move during the game, and it didn’t work. Still, this was Roman, so I took the suggestion seriously. I showed him why I thought it didn’t work; two moves into it he stopped me, reset the board, and showed me another move. A little better, but it still didn’t work.
I wondered how a player as good as he was could make such bad suggestions. After a few more repetitions, I looked up at him. I saw the light in his eyes as it dawned on me; he was testing me. He wanted to know what I had seen in the position before continuing. A few more tries, and he was showing me things I hadn’t seen; things I probably wouldn’t have discovered without several hours of work at home. If then, even. All this without either of us understanding a word the other said.
Something else dawned on me only after I went home following the tournament. He had known what the game position should have looked like. He had looked at it during the tournament and remembered it.
After that I watched him at tournaments. He was almost more interested in other people’s games than in his own. Especially the children’s games. I remember coming in and finding him in the skittles room, analysing a child’s recent game. One of the bystanders turned to a friend and whispered "This is hard. He’s on his clock and I can’t tell him that." After a few minutes more, Roman got up, went into the tournament room and made his move at his board, then returned to the child’s post-mortem.
There are many reasons to remember Roman. What I’ll remember most is the light in his eyes when you refuted one of his suggestions. He was a teacher, through and through; nothing pleased him more than when his students learned. The thing that most disappointed him about chess clubs in the area is that none of them really taught chess. There was no teaching, no coaching going on. Just thousands of blitz games.