The Daniuszewski Manuscript

A brief introduction to Dawid Daniuszewski, before discussing his manuscript.

Dawid Daniuszewski was a Polish chess master, born in the late 1800s (I have seen various dates of 1885, 1887 and 1890). It appears he spent most of his life in Lodz Poland, punctuated by stays and trips into Russia as his tournament records confirm (for simplicity, I will refer to the modern borders, though I believe prior to WWI Poland was part of the Russian Empire).

Tournaments: 2nd 1906 Lodz; 2nd 1907 Lodz; 10th 1907/08 Lodz; 1st 1909 Lodz; 4th 1909 St. Petersburg, 6th 1912 Lodz; 9th 1920 Moscow; 2nd 1922/23 Lodz; 1st 1924 Lodz; 3rd 1924 Warsaw; (team) Paris 1924; 10th 1927 Lodz;

Though certainly never center stage in the world of chess, Daniuszewski was certainly capable. Here is an example of his play.

And another clash later in life...

And like many chess masters of the time, Daniuszewski was an author, writing two chess books, both concerning the Lodz chess club, a newspaper column, and contributing to several chess magazines.

Dawid Daniuszewski

Tragically, none of this is why Daniuszewski is principally known. During WWII Daniuszewski along with some 200,000 other Jews was imprisoned in the Lodz Ghetto. By the end of the war less than 1000 would survive. Daniuszewski was not among the survivors. However, we do know in February of 1944 we was alive. We know this because of a singular chess record written on the blank page of a book. Here is that game.

I am thankful chess was able to provide a respite, no matter how small, at such monstrous time.

All of this has been written before, and by better writers. Tomasz Lissowski primarily and, his work can be found here- http://www.chessarch.com/archive/0011_daniuszewski/daniuszewski.shtml . And normally this is where the story ends. However, maybe not this time...

See I like Chigorin. I like his story, his games, his attitude, I am generally a fanboy. 

To that end, I was sifting through the Russian State Library online collection when I a ran across something I believe to be special. An unpublished manuscript by Daniuszewski on the life and games of Chigorin.

And by manuscript I am referring to a magnum opus of over 1200 handwritten pages, including biographical info, over 800 games, nearly all annotated, crosstables and commentary. See for yourself.

Game Score Crosstable

Are there any new Chigorin games in the manuscript? I am not certain, I have only started looking at them but by game 5 there was one I didn't have in my collection. Here is the game.

My goal is to at the least go through the games, looking for ones I dont have. I would love to be able to translate even a small portion of the text.

If anyone is interested the complete manuscript can be found at https://dlib.rsl.ru/viewer/01008944446#?page=1 ,

And if anyone can or is willing to translate (even the smallest bit would help) send me a message.