Max Nordau Is Victim of Assassination Attempt

December 19, 1903

While attending a Chanukah ball arranged by Mevasseret Zion, a Paris Zionist society, Max Nordau is the victim of an assassination attempt. Nordau, who with Theodor Herzl had founded the World Zionist Organization, escaped unharmed when two shots were fired at him from close range.

The would-be assassin was Chaim Zelig Luban, a 27-year-old Russian student. Approaching Nordau, he cried out, “Death to Nordau, the East African.” A bystander was wounded in the leg in the shooting. The reference to East Africa emerged because of Nordau’s support for the Uganda Plan, which had been introduced at the Sixth Zionist Congress in August 1903.

Luban was found to be mentally ill and was never brought to trial for the assassination attempt. After the attack, Nordau wrote Herzl, “Yesterday evening, I got an instalment on the debt of gratitude which the Jewish people owes me for my selfless labors on its behalf. I say this without bitterness, only in sorrow. How unhappy is our people, to be able to produce such deeds.”

The Uganda Plan is abandoned in 1905 at the Seventh Zionist Congress.