Cantor David Wisnia in his teen years sang for Nazis and given much better treatment than the millions of Jews gassed to death.
Chess in Concentration Camps
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Try searching through batgirl's blogs. This is exactly the type of story she tries to preserve through her writing.
I‘ve read that story about Bernstein
I'm fairly certain I've read an account somewhere of a chess master gaining freedom from a concentration camp by playing well against one of the officials there, but now I am having trouble finding it.
One instance I'm sure of (though I don't have the guy's full name, I will try to contact him) comes from a Russian fellow I met recently. His father, a National Master, beat a German official 5 times in a row. Then the official pulled out his gun and put it on the table, without saying a word. They played a sixth time and the Russian NM was not deterred by the threat of death - he won again, and rather than killing him the official moved him to a group of prisoners with better chances for survival, and he did survive the camp.
I apologize for the lack of sources. The NM's son, with whom I spoke, said he wrote an article about it a while back. I'll try to get a copy of it when I contact him. But in the meantime I was wondering if there are any other known instances of concentration camp prisoners gaining freedom through their chess play. I guess other information about chess in concentration camps would be nice as well.