Asher Ben-Natan Asher Ben-Natan Asher Ben-Natan (February 15, 1921 – June 17, 2014) was an Israeli diplomat and a key figure in the country's defense and diplomacy fields. Ben-Natan led the search for Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was captured in 1960. He became the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Defense from 1959 until 1965. Ben-Natan then served as the first Israeli Ambassador to Germany (then West Germany) from August 1965 until 1970. Ben-Natan was then appointed as Israel's Ambassador to France from 1970 until his retirement in 1974. Asher Ben-Natan was born Arthur Piernikartz in Vienna, Austria, on
Natan Sharansky High treason carried the death penalty. The following year, in 1978, he was sentenced to 13 years of forced labor. Sharansky spent time in the Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, followed by Vladimir and Chistopol prisons, where for part of the time he was placed in solitary confinement. His health deteriorated, to the point of endangering his life. Later he was detained in Perm 35, a post-Stalin-Gulag-type so-called "strict regimen colony" in Perm Oblast. He kept himself sane during solitary confinement by playing chess with himself, in his head. Sharansky appeared in a March 1990 edition of "National Geographic" magazine. The