Another interesting encounter of that WWII Easter Tournament in Prague was that with Praue master Dietze. We had an interesting game. I won it and we chatted about life afterwards. Dietze spoke Czech without a glint of accent. Thus soon I casually asked him whether he heard the latest news from London broadcast: that Germans suffered a string of serious setbacks on all fronts. "I did not heard that, but it is very interesting; the War should be over soon, anyway," was Dietze's jovial reply.

At that moment I felt a kick from behind from Foltys; he pulled me away a visibly distraught whispered: "What are you doing?! Dietze is with SS, he works at Prague Gestapo!!"

I almost fainted. That evening I expected a knock on my door. But nobody came. Next day, at the tournament, Dietze was friendly and we talked about chess.

In May 1945, we learned two things: First of all, Dietze saved dozens, perhaps hundreds of people from arrest and concentration camps. Twenty-three of them have singed sworn affidavits to that effect. Second, Dietze was presently in Soviet custody and faced imminent firing squad. We quickly typed up a petition and several of us, Czech chess-players, signed it. Thelen---a pre-War member of Czech Communist Party---immediately went to negotiate with the Russian camp commander. At the end, Dietze was released and he was also excluded from the deportations of German nationals from Czechoslovakia. He visited me several times and I was helping him to a get a job. I was then already in all sorts of committees; so I printed all sorts of certificates for Dietze, completed with all sorts of official stamps for clean bill of health. But it was all for naught. Nobody offered him a job, except for the most menial physical labor. "You know, German," I was told; "people would spit us in the face if we gave him a job."

At the end, Dietze visited me at home: he would emigrate to Germany on his own accord. He could not live among people for whom he was only half human.

From Germany, I got a letter and a postcard. I wrote Dietze twice, but received no reply. Only years later I learned that he was a victim of some dye-hard-nazi vigilante justice. What a fate: Dietze could not live among Czechs because he was ethnic German, and in Germany he lived only briefly, because he was decent to Czechs during the War! World is a very confused place, but I see that it only now. Back then I pontificated against International Reactionaries.

Dietze died of an heart attack while playing round 8 of Frankfurt city championship 1953/54 where he was at that time second in the table.