Early Life
Born into a Polish Jewish family in Antwerp, Belgium, Koltanowski learned chess while watching his father play his older brother. He took up the game seriously at the age of 14, and was the top Belgian player after the death of Edgar Colle in 1932.
He gave up a fledgling career as a diamond cutter to play full-time.
He served a short stint in the Belgian army, where his primary duty was the peeling of potatoes. While he peeled away absent-mindedly, he studied chess positions. "Soldiers were going hungry", he said, "because I was peeling the potatoes into smaller and smaller cubes."
Read more about this topic: George Koltanowski
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“The vast silence of Buddha overtakes
and overrules the oncoming roar
of tragic life that fills alleys and avenues;
it blocks the way of pedicabs, police, convoys.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)