NUSEN 

Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name is a patronymic surname based on a male ancestor's personal name, in this case of biblical origin.

Nusen is the Yiddish pronunciation of the Hebrew male given name Nathan. Nathan, whose name means "gift", was a biblical prophet during the times of David and Solomon (circa 980-950 BCE).  

Nusen is documented as a Jewish family name with Moises Nusen (1907-1990), a resident of Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

Nathan, Isaac (1790-1864), composer, born in Canterbury, England. In 1810 he went to London and began a career as a singer. In 1814 he met the poet Lord Byron and later composed music, borrowing from Byron’s famous Hebrew Melodies. In 1815 he published his work, A Selection of Hebrew Melodies, Ancient and Modern, in which he adapted the texts to Jewish traditional chants. In 1823 his comic opera Sweethearts and Wives was staged, making him a famous man. In 1841 financial difficulties forced him to move to Australia, making him the first professional musician to live there. He founded choral societies, established music periodicals and pioneered the productions of operas, thus rightly earning the title Father of Australian Music. He died in Sydney, Australia. Among his descendants are pianist Harold Samuel and conductor Charles Mackerras.

Estelle d'Avigdor Nathan (1871-1949), painter, born in Medias, Romania (then part of Austro-Hungary) into an Anglo-Jewish family. She was taken to Britain as a child and educated there. Her paintings were exhibited in London at Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1905 and at Royal Academy in 1907. Among her works a mention should be made of a major mural showing local estate workers in a typical scene painted in 1897 on the west wall of the Goldsmith Hall in Tudeley, a village in Tunbridge Wells borough in Kent, England.

Bernardo Nathan (aka Natan) (1878? – 1964), community leader. He served as the president of the Jewish community of Opatija, Croatia, from 1924 through 1931 and again from 1932 through 1940. Between the two world wars Opatija, or Abbazia, as it known then by its Italian name, was part of Italy. Nathan served the Jewish community of Opatija during the years of Fascist regime in Italy, including after the introduction of the racist anti-Jewish legislation and persecutions in 1938. During WW2 he was arrested and detained in Italy.

After WW2 he returned to Opatija. Nathan took care of the local Jewish cemetery, he also was instrumental in the sale of the former synagogue and using the payment for financing the Jewish nursing home. The building of the former synagogue, located on Nikole Tesle St. in central Opatija, serves the Gradska knjižnica i čitaonica Viktor Car Emin – the city public library of Opatija. The remains of the marble Aron Kodesh (Holy Ark) of the former synagogue were used for a monument in the memory of the Holocaust victims of Opatjia.

Bernard Natan (born Natan Tannenzaft) (1886-1942), film producer, the co-owner of Pathé company during the 1930s, born in Iasi, Romania. He immigrated to France in 1906. During WW I he volunteered to the French army serving in the Légion étrangère for the entire period of the war. In 1911, Natan and his colleagues were convicted of making erotic films, he was jailed for a short time and fined 1,000 francs but due to his exceptional record fighting in WW I the conviction was later removed from his record.
In early 1920s he set up Rapid Film, a laboratory for developing films, and at the same time worked for Paramount Pictures. He became a member of the executive committee of the Federation of Film Employers. In 1929 Natan along with Paul Thomas bought the Pathé company, which was then the largest cinema company in France. He merged his company Rapid Films with Pathé and the new company was renamed Pathé-Natan. In 1929 Natan, in association with John Logie Baird, the inventor of a television system, founded Télévision-Baird-Natan, the first television company in France. Natan advanced the development of the anamorphic film camera lens, a major innovation in film technology. During 1930-1935, the Pathé-Natan company produced more than 60 films, but in 1935 Pathe went bankrupt and consequently the French authorities indicted Bernard Natan for fraud. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1939. In 1942 the Vichy regime stripped him of French nationality and sent him to Drancy camp, from which he was deported to Auschwitz Nazi death camp on September 25, 1942.

Émile Natan (born Tannenzaft) (1906-1962), film producer, born in Iasi, Romania. He immigrated to France and settled in Paris. In France he entered the film industry along with his brother Bernard Natan, a film producer himself who during the 1930s was the co-owner of the Pathé film company. He launched his first film Accusée, levez-vous, a crime film, in 1930. It was followed by another ten films that he produced until the outbreak of WW II. He returned to the film industry in late 1940s and produced another nine films including Violettes imperials, a historical music film that was the second most popular film released in France in 1952, attracting an audience of more than eight million, and Le triomphe de Michel Strogoff, his last film produced in 1961.

Arturo Nathan (1891-1944), painter, born in Trieste, Italy (then part of Austria-Hungary), the son of Jacob Nathan from the Baghdadi Jewish community of Bombay (Mumbay), India, and of Alice Luzzatto from a Jewish Italian family of Trieste. He was educated in Genoa, Italy, and in London. He served in the British army in WW I and returned with a severe post trauma. As part of the therapy, he was encouraged to start painting. Basically an autodidact, he became involved into the intellectual circles in Trieste, particularly with the poet Umberto Saba and the novelist Italo Svevo and later with the painter Giorgio De Chirico who influenced Nathan’s style towards magical realism. Nathan exhibited in Milan in 1929, and in Rome in 1931 and 1935. He participated to collective exhibitions on Italian painting in Barcelona in 1929, Vienna in 1933, and in Budapest in 1936. The introduction of the anti-Jewish racial laws by the Italian fascist regime in 1938 prevented him from continuing to exhibit his works. In 1940, following the entry of Italy in WW II, Nathan, who was a British national, was arrested and detained in Offida and then in Falerone internment camps. When the Germans occupied north Italy in 1943, he was transferred to Fossoli transit camp and then deported to Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp. Nathan died in the Lindele POW camp near Biberach, Germany, where he was waiting to be exchanged by the Nazis for German nationals detained in Allied countries. Some of his works are on display at Museo Revoltella in Trieste and Galleria d’arte moderna in Milan.