Early Life
Flohr had a troubled childhood beset by personal crises. He was born in a Jewish family in Horodenka in what was then Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now in Ukraine). He and his brother were orphaned during World War I after their parents were killed in a massacre, and they fled to the newly formed nation of Czechoslovakia.
Flohr settled in Prague, gradually acquiring a reputation as a skilled chessplayer by playing for stakes in the city's many cafés. During 1924, he participated in simultaneous exhibitions by Richard Réti and Rudolf Spielmann, and he was still giving displays well into his seventies.
Read more about this topic: Salo Flohr
Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)