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
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