Alfred Nossig

Born in Lemberg in Austrian imperial Galicia (today Lviv, Ukraine), Alfred Nossig was brought up in a wealthy family, his father a leader in the Jewish community of Lemberg and an advocate for the political rights of Jews in Galicia through Polonization. Nossig attended Lemberg University, where he received an award for an essay on Jewish demography. After earning his doctorate in Zurich with a dissertation on Spinoza, Nossig turned to art, pursuing sculpture in several cities across Europe. Having been attracted to proto-Zionism during his student years, Nossig attended the First Zionist Congress and in 1904 established the Society for Jewish Statistics. He broke with the Zionist Organization in 1908 and founded the Organization for Jewish Settlement, a Jewish territorialist project that promoted the territorial reconcentration of East European Jews in any available overseas territory. During World War II, Nossig was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, where he cooperated with German police in drawing up plans for mass deportations from the ghetto as a member of the Judenrat. Members of the ghetto’s Jewish Combat Organization accused Nossig of collaboration and executed him.