In the beginning of 1953, Natan's name made headlines after she was arrested by the police, under suspicions that she was wearing women's clothing for criminal intent.

Natan explained to the police officers, as reported by the newspaper Haaretz: "I am a woman in my soul and in my emotions, and only for a physiological error I was born a man".

In the years following she returned to the headlines for another arrest by the police,[a] a hunger strike which she did in an endeavor to receive a permit for a gender-reassignment surgery.

The "Herut" newspaper reported she smiled at the horrified doctors, and said: "Nothing will be of help this time, and you will have to perform surgery on me, take away the unnecessary organs, and make me a woman.

Eventually, she made her way to Mannheim where she lived until January 1961, before moving to Saarbrücken and marrying 65-year-old businessman Willy Benjamin Knäbel in July 1961.