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
Bernard Natan from prison, the French government handed him over to the occupying German authorities. Natan was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp on September 25, 1942, where it is believed he died in 1943. Bernard Natan's importance to the French film industry should not be underestimated. He pioneered the vertical integration of the French film industry, and adopted the "American model" of film-making and distribution. This model provides the underpinning of the French film industry even in the 21st century. Indeed, Pathé survived into the 1980s almost solely on revenues generated by the companies purchased and integration instituted by Bernard Natan.