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From the autumn of 1942 both the main resistance organizations in the Warsaw ghetto, the Jewish Combat Organization and the Jewish Military Union, assassinated collaborators who could threaten preparations for the fight against the Germans. On October 29 the JCO fighters shot dead Jakub Lejkin, the head of the ghetto’s Jewish police. Emanuel Ringelblum lists a dozen other people for whom the attacks were prepared, not all of which were successful – for instance Józef Szeryński, Lejkin’s deputy, was only wounded.

Alfred Nossig was born in 1868 (according to other sources – in 1864) in Lviv. “He was a versatile man,” write Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, “he wrote, sculpted, studied law and economics in Lviv, philosophy in Zurich, and medicine in Vienna.”[1] As a prolific journalist, in his texts, from theatre plays to works on economics, he was especially concerned with Jewish issues. Among his works were Król Syjonu [King of Zion] (a drama about Simon Bar Kochba, the leader of the 1^st century uprising against the Romans) or the novel Jan Prorok. Opowieść na tle galicyjskim  [John the Prophet. A Galician story] set in Lviv.

Nossig became famous especially as a self-taught sculptor, creating works such as The Wandering Jew, Judah Maccabeus, King Solomon. He also sculpted the death mask of the Austrian Empress Elizabeth (Sissi). Nossig’s exhibitions in Paris and Vienna were well received by critics. He collaborated with Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the world famous pianist and later Polish prime minister.

In 1940, Nossig came to the Warsaw ghetto. In December 1939, Ringelblum noted that “Nossig was appointed head of the Emigration Department in the [Warsaw] Jewish Community. Rumors about the displacement of one and a half million Jews from Poland, starting in January”.[5] However, no emigration was prepared by the Germans, as employment in the Judenrat was a cover for the agent’s activities. According to other sources, he later headed the equally fictional Department of Culture in the Warsaw Ghetto. Nossig wrote reports for the Germans on the morale of the Jewish people. At first, he lived, like most of the ghetto elite, at Chłodna Street, at number 39, then at Muranowska 42 Street. It was there that on February 22, 1943, the JCO fighters shot him.[6]

Ber Warm, a member of the Jewish Order Service (ghetto’s German-controlled Jewish police), mentioned that he saw Nossig in the office of Karl Georg Brandt, the SS officer responsible for the deportation of Warsaw Jews to Treblinka in the summer of 1942:

The known Zionist and writer prof. Alfred Nossig, a Jew from Germany, reportedly a former Austrian diplomatic representative during the last world war, often came to Brandt at the Befehlstelle [the German headquarters to manage the great deportation at Żelazna 103 Street, tenement house preserved to this day – P.B.]. The fact that some 2 weeks before the liquidation of the ghetto [according to some sources, the execution took place in April 1943 – P.B.] prof. Nossig was shot dead in his own apartment by members of the Jewish Combat Organization, indicating that he provided Brandt with information from the ghetto that he was popularly known as a “snitch”. Currently, I have learned from reliable sources that after Nossig’s death, a document was found near him, guaranteeing personal inviolability as a deserving Jew. Also found was a letter prepared by him to the authorities, in which he indicates that the Jews are preparing underground and other bunkers for the possibility of a new “deportation action”, he gave examples of the locations and arrangements of some shelters in the ghetto. (…) Prof. Nossig had the so-called “Brandt’s pass”, which made it possible to move around the entire former large ghetto, and thus unlimited access to all “shops” [forced labor workshops – P.B.]. When Brandt found out about the shooting of Nossig, he was to declare “Ja, die Lumpen haben solch einen alten Mann nicht verschont”. How hypocritical it sounded in the mouth of Brandt, a beast in human flesh who [had] on his conscience hundreds of thousands of Jews of both sexes, regardless of age!. [7].