Andor Lilienthal defeated three world champions, escaped the Holocaust, was named one of the first GMs and — hardest of all — befriended Bobby Fischer.

Lilienthal, who died last month at 99, became close to Bobby in the 1990s. Fischer visited the Budapest home of Lilienthal and his wife, Olga, almost every day for four years. The American devoured their borscht and caviar, and recalled how he grew up in Brooklyn.

Bobby said he snubbed Barbra Streisand when they were at Erasmus Hall HS, Olga said in a 2008 interview. “In his words, Streisand resembled a young mouse.”

Lilienthal was a world-class player when he decided not to return to Hungary from the Moscow 1935 super-tournament. “This was the best move in your life,” his chess-loving former schoolmate Janos Kadar later told him.

He lived in Russia for 40 years, but the paranoid Soviets wouldn’t let him play chess abroad. He believed them when they said it was a security matter because David Lilienthal, the head of the US nuclear energy program, was his uncle. (They weren’t related.)

By 1976, Kadar was Hungary’s Communist ruler, and he arranged Lilienthal’s return to Budapest, where he lived out his days as the world’s oldest chess fan.