his school friend Ruben Fridelbaum's house, and his violinist father taught him chess. Mikel was immediately hooked, read books about the game, and was soon able to give his teacher rook odds. A musician friend introduced his fiancée Genia to Najdorf, but Najdorf and Genia fell in love, and Genia broke off her engagement and instead married Mikel. They had one daughter, Lusia. When Najdorf boarded the ship for the Buenos Aires Olympiad in 1939, Genia was ill with influenza, and chose not to accompany him. He arrived in Argentina on 21 August 1939. While the Olympiad was in progress, Najdorf's country was invaded and World War II began. Despite his best efforts, he never saw his family again. His parents, wife and baby daughter, and all his known relatives and friends, were murdered in The Holocaust including his father. However, many years later, by chance he met a Polish immigrant in the New York City Subway, who turned out to be a cousin. In 1944, Najdorf became a naturalized citizen of Argentina. He had studied Latin at college, so easily picked up Spanish. Najdorf spoke eight languages; in addition to his native Polish and adopted Spanish, he spoke English, Russian, Czech, Serbo-Croat, Dutch, and Yiddish. In April 1947, Najdorf met Adela ("Eta"), one of the youngest of three daughters of Russian Jewish immigrants Isaac and Esther Jusid. They were married after only a few weeks of courtship. Adela was 11 years younger than Najdorf. They had two daughters, Mirta (b. 1948) and Liliana (b. 1952), and a miscarried son in between. Liliana was long resentful of the fact that her father was abroad when she was born, and did not see her until she was four months old. She describes her father as a mixture of extremes: violent-tempered, but compassionate and loving, selfish at times but also generous to a fault, jovial and a bon vivant, but also sad because of the terrible losses of the Holocaust. Adela died on 21 August 1977, of an inoperable intestinal tumour. The family kept the diagnosis secret from her, while Najdorf consulted the best oncologists in the US to no avail. Not long after Adela died, Najdorf married again, to Rita, who had been a widow for 12 years. Najdorf had met Rita and her husband Jacobo, a socialist attorney and keen chess player, soon after he arrived in Argentina. They became