Natan Sharansky and Technology. As a child, he was a chess prodigy. He performed in simultaneous and blindfold displays, usually against adults. At the age of 15, he won the championship in his native Donetsk. When incarcerated in solitary confinement, he claims to have maintained his sanity by playing chess against himself in his mind. Sharansky beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a simultaneous exhibition in Israel in 1996. He took his current Hebrew name in 1986, when he was freed from Soviet incarceration as part of a prisoner exchange and received an Israeli passport with his new name. Natan
Asher Ben-Natan February 15, 1921. His father, Natan Piernikartz, operated a clothing business in the Austrian capital. He attended a Hebrew High School and was a member of the Young Macabbi. His father bought five-acres of land in Mandatory Palestine in 1934 in response to the emergence of Nazi Germany and the growth of Antisemitism. The family drew up plans to flee to Palestine in 1938 following the Anschluss of Austria. Asher Ben-Natan fled Austria first. He boarded a Panamanian-registered ship in Piraeus, Greece, from which he sailed to Palestine. The ship dropped the passengers off at Tantura, where he swam to