Planinc actually died in a home for elderly people in 2008, his passing away went totally unnoticed and slovenian chess federation didn't even bother to put the obituary in the newspapers.
Planinc defeated one top-level grandmaster after another, but he did so in a unique way. While other tournament participants prepared for matches in their hotel rooms and halls, every morning he would go to work at the Rog factory, then hurry to the chess tournament after his shift. A man who knew only the workbench at the factory and the chessboard must have felt as though he had landed on Mars when he found himself in the glamorous world of the chess aristocracy. But for someone who had reached the heights of the chess Olympus, returning to the bicycle factory was no longer an option. His only escape was into solitude, where his greatest companion became the illness of the mind.
A stranger in his homeland, but a genius in the world of chess.
I am a Vera Menchik and Wally Henschel fan. Miss Wally Henschel of Germany played against against Vera Menchik at the Hamburg Chess Congress of 1930 during the 2nd Women's World Championship. Ms. Henschel defeated Ms. Menchik in that tournament and it was the highlight of her life. Miss Menchik's defeat by Wally Henschel in 1930 was apparently the only time that Ms. Menchik ever lost a game in a women's world chess championship. Yet Wally still ended the tournament only in 3rd place.
Wally Henschel and her twin sister Käthe Henschel were born in Hamburg on 9 September 1893. Both played excellent chess, Käthe becoming the City of Hamburg women's champion and Wally women’s champion of Germany. Wally was also a very fine pianist, a wonderful singer, and a bridge player. In 1933, with the rise of the Nazis, the sisters were expelled from the Hamburg Chess Club because they were Jewish. On March 25th, 1939, just 6 days before the borders were closed, Wally and her sister managed to escape Germany, abandoning their most prized possession, a Bechstein grand piano, and after many months eventually wound up in New York. Once there, Wally supported herself by giving music and bridge lessons, while Kate (as she then called herself) became a secretary. Whenever they could find the time, both Wally and Kate occasionally played in the New York Chess Club. In 1944, Kate came 3rd and Wally 4th in the United States Women's Chess Championship.
In 1951 or 1952, Kate beat Bobby Fischer at the club when he was 8 or 9 years old and he was furious and apparently never played chess against a woman again. At least, this is the legend, but I have no record of the game nor any way to prove that this actually happened. By the mid-1950s, Wally became blind in one eye and then lost nearly 50% of her vision in the other eye. She died in Miami on December 13th, 1988, at the age of 95, and her twin sister Kate not long thereafter.
Miss Vera Menchik, the women's world chess champion, also Jewish, managed to flee Hungary to England where she and her sister and her mother were killed by a German bomb during the London Blitzkrieg on June 26th, 1944.