Alfred Nossig (18 April 1864 – 22 February 1943) was a Jewish sculptor, writer, and activist in Zionism and Polish civil society.

While being questioned, Nossig fell to his knees and begged for his life, threatening them that the Germans would retaliate if he was killed.

[2] Alfred Nossig was born to a wealthy family in Lemberg (now Lviv), then part of the Austrian Empire (now Ukraine).

[4] Nossige began to write theatre reviews for Polish and Jewish newspapers, and in 1888 published his first collection of poems, Poezje, which won a competition in Warsaw.

Nossig's defection from assimilationist to nationalist Jewish opinions – it has been claimed that he was the first person to use the word 'Zionist' – caused controversy in his circles.

An acquaintance of that period wrote of him: "The root of his soul: a poetic Jewishness; the source of his innermost hidden life: the national revival of the Jewish people; his bearing, his manners, his behaviour towards other human beings, his entire outward mask: a perfect Pole; [...] his culture, his work-style and meticulousness: really true German.

His subjects included The Wandering Jew, Judas Maccabaeus, and King Solomon, as well as portrait busts of Paderewski and of Max Nordau, and a death-mask of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

He also sat on the board of the Jewish publishing house Jüdischer Verlag along with Martin Buber, and became a regular contributor to the journal Ost und West.

[10] At the 1907 Eighth Zionist Congress, Nossig advocated a broad approach to Zionism across the Jewish European communities, with urban and rural settlements both in Palestine and in neighbouring lands.

[11] As a member of the propaganda committee of the WZO, he set out plans for a Zionist news agency and newspaper, and advocate cooperation with the Ottoman Empire to establish settlements.

[13] In 1911 he claimed to the British paper The Daily Mail that the AJKO would benefit Britain by diverting the flow of Russian immigrants.

On 5 January 1918, Nossig met Talat Pasha, then Turkish Minister of the Interior, in Berlin, who offered him vague promises.

However due to divisions in Polish Jewry between assimilationists, traditionalists, Zionists and socialists, and given the fundamental anti-semitism of Marshal Piłsudski (who in reality held political power in the new state), no progress was made.

[21] According to some of Nossig's executioners, a Gestapo identity card and a six-page dossier on the Jewish underground movement were recovered from his personal effects after his execution.