close family friends. Rita and Jacobo had no children of their own, but had many nieces and nephews, and they treated the Najdorf daughters like nieces. The families would often get together, and the men would play and analyse chess and the women would talk. At one such gathering, when Liliana was 13, she saw Jacobo die suddenly at a chessboard. The widowed Rita became an even closer friend to Adela. After Adela died, Rita and Najdorf became a couple, which Miguel's daughters accepted without surprise and with relief. Rita later developed Alzheimer's disease, and Najdorf became physically frailer. In 1996, Najdorf had a serious heart attack in Seville, which required a pacemaker insert. Upon returning to Argentina, he learned that Rita had been hospitalized with an intestinal blockage. He went to the hospital, and she recognized him despite her Alzheimer's, and begged him to take her home, while he kissed her tenderly. Unexpectedly, she died the next day. See also List of Jewish chess players References Citations Further reading External links The Polish Immortal by Edward Winter Chess grandmasters Chess Olympiad competitors Polish chess players Argentine chess players Jewish chess players Chess theoreticians Argentine people of Polish-Jewish descent Argentine Ashkenazi Jews Naturalized citizens of Argentina 1910 births 1997 deaths Jewish Argentine sportspeople Jewish Argentine writers Polish chess writers People from Grodzisk Mazowiecki Sportspeople from Masovian Voivodeship 20th-century chess players Polish emigrants to Argentina